Large quantities of political, economic and demographic data are available in print or manuscript format, such as census information on individuals, and election returns.
Quantitative historians use statistical methods to find patterns of human behavior covering all sectors of society, not just the elites who create documents preserved in traditional archive.
Content analysis is a technique borrowed from journalism research whereby text from newspapers, magazines or similar sources are coded numerically according to a standardized list of topics.
A challenging technique is that of associating occurrences of the name of a given person ("nominal record linkage") whose information appears in multiple sources such as censuses, city directories, employment files and voting registration lists.
Cliodynamics is the application of scientific method to the study of history, combining insights from cultural evolution, macrosociology, and economic history/cliometrics to produce and analyse large quantitative datasets and identify general principles about the evolutionary dynamics and functioning of historical societies.