Major Polling/Public Opinion Sites
- American National Election Studies
The American National Election Studies (ANES), a collaboration between Stanford University and the University of Michigan, "produces high quality data on voting, public opinion, and political participation to serve the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists who want to better understand the theoretical and empirical foundations of national election outcomes." Conducted biennially since 1952, the survey "gauges public sentiment on the political process, the role of government, and social and economic issues." This site permits download of the ANES datasets, many of which are also available through ICPSR and CISER.
- American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy
"The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations’ public opinion survey, conducted quadrennially between 1974 and 2002 and biennially thereafter, is one of the preeminent and most widely cited sources of information on U.S. public and leadership attitudes on international relations and foreign policy." All studies conducted by the CCFR in the past are made fully accessible via the links from their web site. it measures the concerns of Americans regarding economic, political, and military engagement in foreign affairs. Conducted every four years from 1974 to 2002 and now biennially, the full-text of reports and actual survey results are accessible from the site. The most recent surveys, produced under the titles Worldviews 2002 and Global Views 2004, include data from parallel surveys done in EU countries, Mexico, and Korea. Most years are also available as numeric files from ICPSR.
- Gallup Brain
The Gallup Brain is a "searchable, living record of 70 years of public opinion. Inside, you'll find answers to more than 136,000 questions, and responses from more than 3.5 million people interviewed by The Gallup Poll since 1935." This public opinion database includes Gallup Poll News Service articles, Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing articles, and Gallup Management Journal articles that feature in-depth public opinion and management data analyses. Recent political and economic polling results, as well as "special reports" that examine attitudes toward social issues and consumer behavior. Some multinational studies are included. Codebooks and datasets for many Gallup polls are available from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research site (see Roper Center below).
- General Social Survey
The GSS has been conducted since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center. It measures attitudes toward social and public policy issues, economic status, political events, work, and family life. In addition to questions asked each year, topical modules are included on a rotating basis that focus on current issues such as gender equity, religious beliefs, and perception of work. The 1972-2004 file was released in September 2005. ICPSR maintains a GSS Data and Information Retrieval System (GSSDIRS) site that permits you to browse the codebook, select specific variables, and perform some online analyses on the cumulated 1972-2000 file. You may also select extracts for download.
- Health Poll Search
"Health Poll Search is a searchable archive of public opinion questions on health issues that allows users to know what Americans think about health issues, as well as what Americans have thought about health issues over time. Health Poll Search is the result of a partnership between the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut. The Roper Center houses an archive of more than 350,000 public opinion questions dating back to 1935.
The Health Poll Search archive covers 29 topics and more than 300 subtopics, and holds more than 60,000 questions on health issues from health care surveys that have included questions on health. These questions provide information on public perceptions of HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, health policy and health reform, Medicare and Medicaid, women's health, the uninsured, minority health, and children's health. Response percentages and source information are provided for all questions."
- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
ICPSR, established in 1962, "maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction, and offers training in quantitative methods to facilitate effective data use. To ensure that data resources are available to future generations of scholars, ICPSR preserves data, migrating them to new storage media as changes in technology warrant. In addition, ICPSR provides user support to assist researchers in identifying relevant data for analysis and in conducting their research projects." ICPSR is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization serving member colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. The site includes good help and tutorial materials.
- iPoll
Provides access to individual poll questions and answers, as well as full polling datasets. Includes access to Harris polls.
- LexisNexis Statistical
Index to statistical publications from US and state government agencies, international intergovernmental organizations, professional and trade organizations, business organizations, commercial publishers, independent research organizations, and universities. Comprised of three indexes--the American Statistics Index (ASI)--Index to International Statistics (IIS)-- and Statistical Resources Index (SRI) that give bibliographic citations, abstracts, and links to selected full-text tables and web sites when available. The Government Publications Library has the companion microfiche collections which include copies of almost all the publications indexed in this database. Using the "Search Tables Base Edition" you can search by terms potentially used in the headings or x & y axis desciptors to find specific tabular data. These tables are often available as GIF files or downloadable as Excel files.
- National Opinion Research Center (NORC)
NORC is a national organization for research at the University of Chicago. From the home page you can access press releases on their recent studies. By selecting the "Projects" option, you will get detailed information on their many studies and surveys, including the General Social Survey. "NORC's projects fall into five major substantive areas: economics and population; education and child development; health survey, program and policy research; substance abuse, mental health, and criminal justice; and statistics and methodology."
- Odum Institute: Data Archive Services
"The Odum Institute maintains one of the oldest and largest catalog of machine-readable data in the U.S. It has an extensive collection of U.S. Census data, including one of the most complete holdings for 1970 Census files. Other major sources of data include the North Carolina State Data Center, which distributes North Carolina census data; and the National Center for Health Statistics." The searchable site includes an excellent set of links to further data.
- Pew Research Center
"The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does so by conducting public opinion polling and social science research; by reporting news and analyzing news coverage; and by holding forums and briefings. It does not take positions on policy issues. The Center's work is carried out by seven projects:
* Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
* Project for Excellence in Journalism
* Stateline.org
* Pew Internet & American Life Project
* Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
* Pew Hispanic Center
* Pew Global Attitudes Project
All of which are accessible from this page. Many of the studies are available as pdf summaries with at least some of the data included.
- Polling the Nations
The online version of the American Public Opinion Index, this database is a compilation of more than 14,000 surveys conducted by more than 700 polling organizations in the United States and more than 80 other countries. Each of the nearly 350,000 records reports a question asked and the responses given. Also included in each record is the polling organization responsible for the work, the date the information was released, the sample size, and universe. The site now includes large collections of historical polls from the 1940s.
- PollingReport.com
An independent, nonpartisan resource on American public opinion covering politics, business and American pop culture.
- Program on International Policy Attitudes
The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) carries out research on public opinion on foreign policy and international issues by conducting nationwide polls, focus groups and comprehensive reviews of polling conducted by other organizations. PIPA is a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland.
- Public Agenda Online
This site provided extensive information on current and controversial issues such as abortion and legal gaming, the family, education etc. Each segment has an overview, facts and trends, different perspectives, links to news stories, and results of public opinion polls.
- Public Opinion Poll Question Database
"The Odum Institute's Public Opinion Poll Database allows any researcher to search for specific poll questions among the more than 230,000 questions in the Institute's archive by key words, date, study number, study title, or state. The system displays the full question text, study information, and frequency distributions, so it is useful both to users interested in looking up previous question wordings to develop questions for their own studies and to users interested in frequencies or in locating particular variables for statistical analysis." For many polls, data may be downloaded for free. For some polls (Harris, NNSP, Southern Focus, and Carolina Polls), you may run crosstabs online.
- Public Opinion Surveys (Cornell Institute for Social & Economic Research)
An excellent set of links from Cornell University. "Some of these sites contain questions on a specific topic or an entire survey or questionnaire. Others include response cross tabulations and information on a survey's methodology. Those containing only brief summaries of survey results are not included, nor are sites that concentrate on survey methodology."
- Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
This web site covers politics and government, public institutions, international relations, business, social affairs and consumer behavior and preferences. The file includes sources in opinion polling such as Gallup, Harris, Roper; ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC; Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal. The file is maintained by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, a non-profit education and research organization in the field of public opinion and public policy.
- Science and Engineering Indicators (National Science Foundation)
This National Science Foundation biennial report to Congress provides "a broad base of quantitative information about U.S. science, engineering, and technology." The site includes reports from 1993 to the present. If you click on the "Survey Descriptions," you get background information on the various studies conducted, which includes information on the availability of data.
Related Guides and Information
- Census Statistics
[Page no longer available]
- National Council on Public Polls
"The National Council on Public Polls (NCPP) is an association of polling organizations established in 1969. Its mission is to set the highest professional standards for public opinion pollsters, and to advance the understanding, among politicians, the media and general public, of how polls are conducted and how to interpret poll results." Useful information, links and other background information.
- Polling 101: A Tutorial
Prepared by the Roper Center, this tutorial "is intended to offer a simplified glimpse into some of the fundamentals of public opinion polling. Designed for the novice, POLLING 101 provides definitions, examples, and explanations that serve to introduce interested students to the field of public opinion research."
Page Coordinator: Nancy Herther n-hert@tc.umn.edu
This URL: http://www.lib.umn.edu/libdata/page.phtml?page_id=2257
|
