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Penn State University Libraries

Public Opinion Polls for Journalists

 

Contact

Debora Cheney
Larry and Ellen Foster Communications Librarian, and, Head, Library Services to the World Campus/Penn State Online
814-863-1345

or Your Campus Librarian

 

Related Guides

Polls and Surveys

Statistics

Articles & Databases

  • Gallup Poll News Service (via LexisNexis)
    • 2003-date
    • Polling based news source
    • News centered on public opinion
  • Polling the Nations 
    • Compilation of more than 14,000 surveys conducted by over 1000 polling organizations
    • Includes United States and 100 other countries
    • 1986-present
  • iPOLL (Roper Center for Public Opinion Research) 
  • Odum Public Opinion Data (Odum Archive Dataverse)
    • Largest available collection of state-level data

Evaluating Polls

Pennsylvania Polls

  • Penn State Pulse
    • Provides summary statistics from surveys of Penn State students
  • The Keystone Poll
    • Franklin and Marshall College Center for Opinion Research
    • Provides Pennsylvania-specific public opinion polls in .PDF format
  • Quinnipiac University
    • Provides survey results from residents in Connecticut, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and nationwide
    • Includes political races, state and national elections, and issues of public concern, such as schools, taxes, transportation, municipal services and the environment

News Organization Polls

Poll Aggregator Websites

  • Pollster
    • Tracks, aggregates, and analyzes political polls (including presidential, congressional, and gubnatorial races)
    • Provides links to other polling and survey research groups and resources, and has a very helpful FAQ page that explains how political polling is done. [College & Research Library News, 69 (1), p.20]
  • PollingReport.com
    • An independent, non-partisan resource on trends in American public opinion

More Resources

 

Polling Organizations

  • Gallup
    • Data-driven news
    • Relevant, timely and visionary research on what people around the world think
  • Harris Interactive
    • Searchable by keyword or date
    • Supplies results in the form of news releases, analysis articles, and individual questions with responses
  • Kaiser Family Foundation
    • Free access to questions with responses in .PDF format to surveys about health and health-care issues back to 1994
  • National Opinion Research Center
    • Current major research areas include economics, population education, child developmen, health survey, program, and policy research,substance abuse, mental health, criminal justice, statistics and methodology
    • Depending on the study, users can view questionnaires, datasets, frequencies, and analyses
  • Pew Research Center
    • A gateway for other "project" websites being conducted by Pew Research
    • Use tabs at the top of the page to access different kinds of reports and analyses
  • Pew Poll Database
    • Searchable database that provides basic results
    • Search tips provided
  • Pew Daily Number
    • Highlights important trends or findings
    • Information is drawn from surveys
    • Updated every weekday and lists the past 30 days
  • Public Agenda (Free registration required for some data)
    • Provides citizen awareness of policy issues from a nonpartisan perspective
    • Use "Issue Guides" to find facts, view differing opinions, look at common misperceptions, and locate lists of key pollsters for the issues
    • Click on "Research data" for other data
  • Survey Research Center (Registration required for some data)
    • Current projects include the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Monitoring the Future study of high school youth, and the Health and retirement study
    • Tables, charts and reports are included
  • Zogby (Registration required to review survey results)
    • Provides current news releases and articles from third-party sources that feature data from Zogby polls
    • "Trends Over Time," time-series data relating to current topics in the media
 

Polling Data Archives

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  • Association Religion Data Archive
    • Includes American and international surveys and results
  • Inter-university Consortium for Political Social Research
    • Create a Mydata account to download dataset (PSU access only)
    • Considered the principal scholarly social science data archive
    • Contains commercial public opinion polls, archives of the Eurobarometer series and the ISSP
    • Polling organizations represented include: ABC News, CBS News, New York Times, Washington Post
 

Multinational / Foreign Polls

  • Afrobarometer-Africa Public Opinion Research Home Page
    • Conducts regular surveys of African opinions from more than a dozen nations on a wide range of topics
    • Provides surveys, survey results, working papers, and briefing papers
  • Asiabarometer
    • Results available from the Interuniversity Consortium for Social and Political Research; coverage from 2003 - 2007
  • Canadian Opinion Research Archive
    • Provides Canadian commercial and independent surveys dating from 1973
    • Surveys are searchable by date, broad topic, and province
  • LAPOP - Latin American Public Opinion Project
    • .PDF reports from the survey archives represent results from North, South and Central America and more
    • Datasets are available for a fee
  • European Public Opinion Analysis
    • Provides current and past summaries and full reports from the Eurobarometer general and topical survey series, as well as links to other European polls
  • Japanese Data Archive (JPOLL) (Free registration required)
    • Contains more than 10,000 public opinion questions and responses from Japan's major survey research sources
    • Coverage from 1980-1998
  • Questionbank : Social Surveys and Research Questionnaires Online
    • Searchable by survey name, topic, or keyword
    • Limited to United Kingdom for surveys conducted from 1991 to present
  • UK Data Archive-Major Studies
    • Includes the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities
    • Lists major surveys of British and European public opinion surveys conducted by governmental agencies and social organizations
  • Latin American Databank (LAD) (Data access limited to Roper Express registrants)
    • Holds nearly 1200 studies from 16 countries, with largest contributions coming from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela
  • Latinobarometro
    • An annual survey of public opinion in 18 countries in Latin America; coverage from 1995-2008
    • PDF summaries of survey results are available under the "Reports" pull-down menu
  • Mansfield Asian Opinion Poll Database
    • Offers opinion polls on key policy-related issues from major media organizations and other agencies in Japan and South Korea; coverage from 2004-2006
  • World Values Survey
    • Provides access to tables and graphs showing national or comparative survey results for selected countries to the four waves of the World Values Survey conducted from 1981 to 2004
  • World Public Opinion.org (WPO)
    • Covers national, cross-national, and international surveys
    • Information adapted from Gary Thompson and Sean Conley's "Guide to Public Opinion Poll Web Sites" in College and Research Libraries News
 

Resources from other Academic Institutions

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