As Bonnie Swoger stated in her recent review in Library Journal, the Statista interface is very “sleek” and user friendly. From a simple search box, the number of results can be overwhelming. The search limit functions help narrow results, but Swoger notes that limits must be applied one at a time; it would be more helpful to set limits prior to executing a search. The developers report that they are continuing to refine interface functions. Browsers facilitate the casual user’s selection of broad industry-based topic areas such as: Media & Advertising; Energy & Utilities; and Finance, Insurance, & Real Estate.  Subdivisions to these categories include aspects such as popular items (“top statistics” ), pricing, companies, production, and consumer behavior.

Each table is accompanied by fairly detailed metadata that gives a description of the source, release date, and direct link to the source where available. Identifying associated types of information is facilitated by linked keyword and topical tags. The developers indicate there are nearly 80,000 access points for current data, including the topic areas, subdivisions, and keywords.

Download functions are very flexible for subscribing users, including files in JPEG, PowerPoint, or Excel file formats (allowing further manipulation of the data). The campus licenses provide very flexible and generous rights, permitting full publication rights without requiring further requests for permission.

Researchers wishing to use only the open access content must register by email to obtain a free account. The open access accounts have limited functionality; there is no access to specialized reports and customized data, and limited download capability.

The interface is available in German language as well as English. Note that some early, European-oriented content is indexed only through the German interface. Search results can be filtered by language.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Statista is easy to use and will be very appealing for undergraduate research and non-specialists wishing to augment investigations with an intriguing variety of data.

For advanced data users, the biggest advantage of Statista is its inclusion of data from many individual U.S. and European companies as well as data from industry associations, government agencies, and intergovernmental organizations.  The European focus and individual company information sets Statista apart from other subscription sources of data like SimplyMap or Proquest Statistical Datasets.  While historical and time series data are not a focus of Statista, the metadata about each table provides all the necessary information to go to the table’s source, where historical information may be available.  Even though the download options do not include comma delimited format or formats that load directly into specific statistical software packages, some statistical software packages can convert Excel files to their native format.  Another advantage of Statista for the advanced data user is the ability to filter search results by region and by the structure of the data (such as time series, proportions, and rankings).