When you start thinking about a project; one crucial element that will drive your research is data availability, especially for those who are interested in quantitative data analysis. NYC Open Data can be a great resource.

NYC Open Data holds various datasets in 11 fields, including health and environment data, that you might find interesting to use in your project. For instance, one ready-to-go dataset is the NYC Community Health Survey (CHS), a telephone survey conducted annually by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Division of Epidemiology that "provides robust data on the health of New Yorkers, including neighborhood, borough, and citywide estimates on a broad range of chronic diseases and behavioral risk factors."

If you enjoy data wrangling and figuring things out on your own, the large and raw datasets also provided on the NYC Open Data site will give you an opportunity to conduct more unique analysis and spark your creativity. The 311 Service Requests dataset, for instance, has numerous data points that you can dig into. Bear in mind that some of these datasets are large, which may require you to have some knowledge in statistical software (e.g., R, SAS, STATA).

For map enthusiasts, NYC Open Data has datasets that contain spatial data. When you type “GIS” or “Shapefile” in the search bar, you will see collections of spatial datasets that you can explore.

And if you are interested in doing research outside of NYC? The federal government's Data.gov is good place to start.