• There is a great deal of overlap in the data from resource to resource
• Not much international data
• U.S. data pretty much began in the 1930's

There is wide variety in the resources offered by the online sites. Some will provide the data, but others will only provide information about the survey or the survey questions themselves.

• full-data
• partial data
• free, or subscription-based
• free partial data, subscription required for full-data
• survey information w/o data (i.e. the text of the survey without the results)
• index description of survey, only

Two important online guides:

• Michael Engle's Polling and Public Opinion Data: A Research Guide

• Pam Baxter's Public Opinion Surveys from the CISER web page (linked from Michael's page above).

All of the sites that Michael has pulled from the CISER Public Opinion Surveys site have data (in other words, he left off the sites that are mainly concerned with the construction of survey questions).

Highlights -- US Sources:

Gallup Organization website -- Useful for recent polls. Detailed data only available to subscribers, however, we have many of the print products. It may be helpful to use the online source as an index to the print material.

Gallup Poll. Annual. (HM 261 G17 G2) Cumulative volume covers 1935-1971. 1973 to date in annual volumes.

The Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing (Olin Ref HM 261 A1 G17+) This is one of the print products we have that is not currently available to us online. It is a monthly publication that includes data and analysis. Some topics include charts of historical data.

Harris Interactive. 1998 - .The Harris Poll surveys. Many of the survey questions are repeated throughout the years providing a way to track trends in public opinion.

Harris Poll. Earlier title: Harris Surveys and ABC news-Harris survey. (Olin Ref HN 90 P8 H31+) . We have from 1980 - .

Public Agenda Online. Not-for-profit site, integrates polling data with background data. For some questions, coverage extends pretty far back. In some ways, it is similar to CQ Researcher, but includes more survey data. The "Issue Guide" section of the website includes an overview of the issue, major players, bills and proposals, "Red Flags" (cautionary notes about where survey findings may be misleading), and more.

National Journal's Poll Track From the pull-down menu on the right, choose Poll Track/ "Polling on Key Issues" to browse by topic.

Roper Center, part of LexisNexis Academic . Choose Reference/Polls & Surveys.

American Public Opinion Index. --> American Public Opinion Data microfiche. 1981 - 2000. Good for historical time series data. The Index lists the questions and points to the microfiche which includes the complete response data.

Sample from the American Public Opinion Index

Highlights -- International Sources:

Index to International Public Opinion, 1978 - 1999

Exercises:

exercises [pdf]