Electricity and Fuel Oil Prices in the United States: Exploring US Energy Prices and Expenditures in Data Planet Statistical Datasets

The Data Planet repository provides statistics that present a view of trends in prices of and spending on fuels in the United States. The indicators included in the datasets can be mapped against other demographic, trade, and pricing indicators that are present in the repository, revealing possible relationships among them.

Data Planet is available via IP (and proxy server) authentication at https://dataplanet.sagepub.com/. The Data Planet interface allows users to browse available datasets by subject and source and to manipulate variables to create customized views of the data, as well as to search for statistics of interest via Quick Search.

(EZproxy users, please visit here.)

In Data Planet Statistical Datasets, the many indicators on the topic of energy prices and spending on fuels can be viewed as stand-alone trends, charts, or maps. For example, the chart below shows the monthly trend of retail gasoline prices in the United States since 1990:

Create a comparison of monthly variations in retail gasoline prices by grade. To select multiple indicators, select Compare Datasets at the top of the left hand navigation: 

Next, select the indicators of interest as in the image below, and the data will populate the chart:

Try it yourself with another indicator, eg, Poverty Status, Unemployment Rate, and more.  Keep in mind that the graphs you create do not necessarily imply causality: the results may suggest a potential relationship between the variables you select, which may be an interesting line of inquiry for your own research.

For more information on using Data Planet, see https://data-planet.libguides.com/statisticaldatasets .