The word “data” is plural. In scientific research, the term “data” refers to a collection of many individual pieces of information, and so is plural. Read more here.
Be sure that you use the plural forms of any pronouns or verbs you use with “data.” For example:
“These data were analyzed…” is correct.
“This data was analyzed…” is not correct.
Learn more about data (and find open datasets) on the library's Statistics@APUS site.