MARK SETZLER


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Where can you find survey datasets?

There is an incredible amount of high-quality survey data available for researchers to use at no cost. Here are some of the sites that HPU students have used in the past when writing theses and independent-study.

  • A great place to find survey datasets is the Pew Research Center, which conducts both US and international survey work. Their site contains hundreds, if not thousands, of datasets that can be accessed at no cost if you registered at the site. If you are in the process of figuring out what you would like to do a research project on, start off on the main website for the center: https://www.pewresearch.org/

  • Take look at a couple of the most recent stories posted by Pew to get a sense of how the organization tells folks what they are doing with the public opinion surveys they are administering. Not every story focuses on public opinion data, so find a couple of those.

  • Next, go to the tab on top banner labeled "Research Topics," and then select the link for "Full topic list." Take a look at a couple of topics that seem interesting.

  • Now, go to tab on the top banner labeled, "Tools & Resources." Look at the resources for "Survey Question Search." Try a practice search in "International Questions." For example, check the box that will show results only from surveys that have been administered in Brazil and then search this term: polit (the partial word search will survey questions that included either political or politics).

  • Now, go back to tab on the top banner labeled, "Tools & Resources." Look at the section labeled "Dataset downloads." This is where you can find and download the public-use datatsets noted in many of the Pew articles you see on the website. This is a great place to start if you are looking for data on specific groups or have no idea yet what you'd like to write a research project on. If you are interested in doing work on foreign countries, for example, you'll want to begin looking in the "Global Attitudes" unit.

  • IMPORTANT: Pew typically embargoes the release of new survey data for a least a year so its researchers can publish findings first. This section of the website will be the best place to start looking for a thesis topic using Pew data because the press releases in this section all refer to datasets that already are available.

  • If you are most likely to do a topic on American politics, the ATP (American Trends Panel) data is going to be a good place to start looking for a topic. The ATP is a very high quality panel survey that typically interviews 5-10 thousand respondents, oversampling young conservatives and several minority groups. 

  • Take quick look at these Pew Center websites to get a sense about what kinds of topics the various research units at Pew are looking at:

    • Pew Research Center for the people and the press (domestic studies on issues other than those tackled by Pew's special units): https://people-press.org/

  • Internet and new media: https://www.pewinternet.org/

  • Data for other Pew research units, can be obtained by following this path: Tools and Resources -> Dataset Downloads -> Select Research Area

Because of the organization's quality, its hundreds of surveys, and the range of topics studied, most students will be encouraged to base their senior thesis on surveys previously administered by the Pew Foundation. However, if you happen to have a strong interest in areas outside of Pew's focus, there are many other options you can look at, including:

  • Some of you may be primarily interested in American politics. Going back decades, political scientists have used data from the ANES (American National Election Study), which is administered for each US Presidential election. The ANES pools questions asked of the same respondents before and after the election. Its questionnaires and data can be accessed here:
    https://electionstudies.org/data-center/

  • One particularly useful source for data on US politics is the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), which is administered every two years: https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/ . In addition to having a vast number of political questions, the standout feature of these datasets are their sample size: over 50,000 respondents. Because it has such large sample sizes, the CCES is the best source of American politics data to study specialized populations like US veterans or Evangelical Protestants when there is no group-specific survey available. Most surveys do not have large enough samples to look at groups that make up a small share of the US population.

  • Another great source of data for Americans' political behavior and thinking is the Voter Study Group surveys: https://www.voterstudygroup.org/ . They use large enough samples to study some groups that would not be well suited to a smaller Pew survey sample. They have over-sampled African Americans and Latinos, so this is a good place to start if you want to study American politics and examine (some) racial differences.

  • And yet another excellent source for survey data on American attitudes is the Public Religion Research Institute (https://www.prri.org/about/). They typically release datasets within a couple of years after each survey (see: https://www.prri.org/data-vault/) and are a particularly good source if you want to look at divisive social issues and politics. Locating their datasets is a pain because of the "Parc" filtering system they are now using for the "Data vault." To take a look at what datasets are available, follow the data vault page's search link. Using the "Parc" search engine, check just the search box for "projects." Then, put in a date range. Unfortunately, PRRI has started to take longer to release datasets, and sometimes they are releasing only partial datasets. That said, the Value Surveys datasets typically contain a large set of variables that could lead to interesting thesis projects.    

  • The other main source of data on political public opinion in Latin America is the Latinobarometer: https://www.latinobarometro.org (again, available at no cost). Although the Americasbarometer and LatinoBarometer have many of the same questions, some items--usually a battery of specialized questions for just one year--differ. Also, the LatinoBarometer is administered every year, while the Americasbarometer is fielded every two. If you want to compare the US or Canada to a Latin American country, only the Americasbarometer includes the US and Canada.

  • Similar data and resources are available at the Arab Barometer's website if you want to study citizens' views and behavior in the Middle East and North Africa: https://www.arabbarometer.org/.

  • And this is a major source for public opinion data on Europeans: https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/. The European Values Survey is also a good place to find Europe-specific data: https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/. The Values Survey includes countries in Eastern and Central Asia. 

  • The World Values Survey is the most widely used data for researchers looking a differences between counties over time, but you can also download datasets for specific countries: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp. You can search "WVS" in a Google Scholar search to find articles published using the data or follow the links in the "Paper Series" menu to find research papers published by WVS researchers.


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