CQ’s State Fact Finder 2006 (book)
Carleton Reference HA 214 .C68 2006
“More than 265 Tables for Quick Research” “One-Stop Ranking Profiles for Every State”
Surprisingly, the blurbs on the front of this book capture some of the most important reasons one would use this reference book. Congressional Quarterly gathers information from respected state, national, and other sources to create tables that compare and rank the states (and also Washington D.C., when applicable) on over 250 topics. Find tables grouped into broad subjects in the first part and, in the second, go to a state of interest and see its rankings across the topics.
Additional value in this text is found in the measures that are harder to locate elsewhere such as “Governors’ Power Rating,” the source of which is not a public agency but an indivual researcher. The end of each topical section contains the source notes for every table. In the case of the governors’ power rating, the source notes direct you to a web site where the data behind the rankings can be downloaded.