Public Opinion Data Resources  

The Harvard College Library maintains a rich collection of national and international public opinion data in many different formats including indexes, periodicals, and websites. This guide provides a description, time span, location and call number of each resource. It also notes whether the resource provides summary-level data or micro-level data.

Summary-level data are published data points in either print or electronic format. You would use summary-level data if you were looking for a quick statistic such as a Presidential Approval Rating.

Gallup Brain
Fully searchable records of 70+ years of public opinion polling data and analyses compiled by Gallup, Inc.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
The Pew Research Center is an independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward the press, politics and public policy issues. It conducts regular monthly polls on politics and major policy issues as well as the News Interest Index, a weekly survey aimed at gauging the public's interest in and reaction to major news events. It also has a data archive.

Pew Social and Demographic Trends
Studies behaviors and attitudes of Americans in key realms of their lives, including family, community, health, finance, work and leisure. Includes datasets on aging, mobility, gender, middle class, race, marriage, parenthood, Muslim Americans, personal finance, social trust, work, optimism, cars, and family bonds.

Pollingreport.com (1985 - present)
This resource provides summary-level highlights from recent national polls, and includes some historical comparative data. The main subjects include politics and policy, business/economics, and the American scene. Users can also select data from the featured topics or search using the site’s search engine.

Polling the Nations (1986-present)
Polling the Nations is a comprehensive compilation of public opinion surveys, containing the full text of more than 350,000 questions and responses from 14,000 surveys conducted by 700 polling organizations from 1986 to the present in the United States and more than 80 other countries. Each record provides a question asked and the responses given. Also included are the polling organization responsible for the poll, the sample size and the date the poll was released.

Roper Center- Presidential Approval Ratings (1937-present)
This resource provides presidential approval ratings for President Roosevelt- President Obama. Data can be transferred to MS Excel format (cut and paste).

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research provides access to summary-level (aggregate) and micro-level (raw) public opinion data. While the data collection focuses strongly on United States public opinion, it also includes growing collections of (micro-level) European, Latin American (Latin American Databank) and Japanese (Japanese Data Archive and JPOLL) polls. The data archive (micro-level data) is searchable by keyword, date, and survey organization. The iPOLL database is searchable at the question level. The full-text retrieval system allows the user to see the exact wording of the question as well as all corresponding responses. Users can search by keyword and/or subject, and limit by survey organization or date. All study level information is provided. If available, direct links to data and documentation are provided. The Roper Center resources require users to set up individual accounts in order to gain access to the data.

Micro-level data files are the numerically-coded results of individual responses to such files as the census questionnaires, public opinion surveys, etc. You have much more flexibility to work with the data and run statistical analyses on the extracted data. The data are in an unanalyzed, raw format of columns and rows, usually in ASCII format but not always. Some raw data files are accompanied by files in SPSS, SAS or other statistical software format for easier use in these packages. If you are working with only the raw data, you must consult the data documentation (codebook) and write a small program or use an extraction program to have the computer "read" in the data into a useable format.

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research provides access to summary-level (aggregate) and micro-level (raw) public opinion data. While the data collection focuses strongly on United States public opinion, it also includes growing collections of (micro-level) European, Latin American (Latin American Databank) and Japanese (Japanese Data Archive and JPOLL) polls. The data archive (micro-level data) is searchable by keyword, date, and survey organization. The iPOLL database is searchable at the question level. The full-text retrieval system allows the user to see the exact wording of the question as well as all corresponding responses. Users can search by keyword and/or subject, and limit by survey organization or date. All study level information is provided. If available, direct links to data and documentation are provided. The Roper Center resources require users to set up individual accounts in order to gain access to the data.

America's Barometer (LAPOP - Latin American Public Opinion Project)
Multi-country, regularly conducted survey of democratic values and behaviors in the Americas. Topics include citizen views on system support, political tolerance, citizen participation, local government, corruption, and views on authoritarianism for the Americas.  Coverage 2004-2010.

Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
One of the world’s oldest and largest social science data archives; based at the University of Michigan. The collection contains public opinion data including United States election exit polls.  ICPSR datsets are also available for Harvard affiliates in the IQSS Dataverse Network.

IQSS Dataverse Network
IQSS Dataverse provides access to Harvard's Murray Research Archive, as well as these other large data collections:  ICPSR, NARA (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration), Roper Center, and The DataWeb (U.S. Census Bureau).  Numeric Data Services and other smaller collections can also be searched.  Data can be downloaded if permissions allow and in some cases subset for analysis.

The Odum Institute (1960-present)
This public opinion database maintained by the University of North Carolina provides access to the Harris Poll, Carolina Poll, Southern Poll, National Network of State Polls and Knight Foundation Community Poll collections.