Finding Public Opinion Polls for Communications Research

Welcome
Poll Basics
Pennsylvania Polls
Major U.S. Media Polls
Major U.S. Commercial/Nonprofit Polling Organizations
Polling Data Archives/Searchable Databases
Multinational/Foreign Polls
Still Not Finding What You Need?
Additional Resources

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Welcome

Scientific polling organizations have grown in scope and size since their introduction in the 1930s with the well-known Gallup, Roper, and Harris polls, among others. The sites included in this guide focus heavily on those concerning general public polls, especially those whose formats are easily accessible. Because they are generally considered biased and unscientific, web and blog polls are specifically omitted from this guide.

Poll Basics

• A Media Guide to Survey Research (World Association for Public Opinion Research)
  Provides an introduction to public opinion research that informs journalists and consumers how to determine whether a poll is scientific or unscientific, biased or objective, valid or invalid, and other key elements to consider when evaluating polls.
• Polling 101 : Fundamentals of Polling (The Roper Center for Public Opinion)
  Describes the basic principles of polling and sampling through the use of iPoll Databank examples.
• ABC News' Guide to Polls & Public Opinion
  The ins and outs of ABC News polls: how they work, and why they exist.
• Public Agenda
  Offers information on the field of opinion research gathered from a variety of sources and commentators.

Pennsylvania Polls

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

Major U.S. Media Polls

• ABC News Polling Unit (1999 to the present)
• The Associated Press/IPSOS Poll (Current year)
• CBS News Polls (2005 to the present)
• Fox News Polls (2005 to the present)
• The L.A. Times Poll (1996 to the present)
• The New York Times Poll (2002 to the present)
• The NPR/Kaiser/Kennedy School Polls (1999 to the present)
• Time Magazine/SRBI Polls
• The Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll (subscription required)
• The Washington Post Polls (1997 to the present)

Major U.S. Commercial/Nonprofit Polling Organizations

• Gallup Brain (subscription required for full access)
  Limited free access to recently-published analysis articles and selected recent questionnaires.
• Harris Interactive
  Searchable by keyword or date, this site provides access to Harris polls back to 1998 and 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 and population education and child development; health survey, program, and policy research; substance abuse, mental health, criminal justice; and 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.
• 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, among others. 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 and "Trends Over Time" time-series data relating to current topics in the media.

Polling Data Archives/Searchable Databases

• American Religion Data Archive
  Includes American and international surveys and results.
• Canadian Opinion Research Archive
  Provides Canadian commercial and independent surveys dating from 1973 forward. Surveys are searchable by date, broad topic, and province.
• ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political Social Research) (Data free to Penn State)
  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.
• LAPOP - Latin American Public Opinion Project
  .PDF reports from the survey archives represent results from Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and more. Datasets are available for a fee. Also see the Social Sciences Library's Latin American Politics Page. Stop by the Social Sciences Reference Desk, 2nd floor Paterno Library, for more information about these and other sources.
• Polling the Nations
  Covers 14,000 surveys from 1986 from many of the major pollsters. Allows full-text keyword searching.
• Public Opinion Poll Question Database from the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science
  Coverage includes Harris, Southern Poll, state polls, and the Knight Foundation Community polls from before 1970 to present, dependent upon topic.
• Questionbank : Social Surveys and Research Questionnaires Online
  Searchable by survey name, topic, or keyword. Limited to the United Kingdom for surveys conducted from 1991 to the present.
• iPoll
  The data in iPOLL come from surveys conducted in the United States since 1935 and are among the archival holdings of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. While most of the information in iPOLL is taken from press releases or other reports issued by polling firms, the Center also has computer-readable data-individual responses stored on diskette or other magnetic media for many of the studies. All are national polls.
• 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.
• World Public Opinion.org (WPO)
  Covers national, cross-national, and international surveys.

Multinational and 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 - 2005.
• 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.
• FOM : Public Opinion Foundation (Russia)
  Provides a weekly edition highlighting selected Russian polls as well as a database that includes responses to questions.
• 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.
• Latin American Databank (LAD) (Data access limited to Roper Express registrants)
  Holds nearly 1000 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 1995-2004. .PDF summaries of survey results are available under the "Press" 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.

Still Not Finding What You Need? Try these other research guides...

• CISER Data Archive — Public Opinion Surveys (Cornell University)
  Provides annotated list of sources for actual text or results of public opinion surveys, including U.S. national regional surveys and cross-national polls.
• Public Opinion Polls — Research Guide (University of Pennsylvania Library)
  Provides a long list of print and online sources for polling data, including specific information on Data Archives for Public Opinion Surveys.

Additional Resources

For additional resources, including specific state and regional poll surveys and information, scroll to the bottom of Thompson and Conley's Guide to Public opinion poll web sites: Polling data from around the world from C&RL News, October 2006, Volume 67, Number 9.

Information adapted from Gary Thompson and Sean Conley's "Guide to Public Opinion Poll Web Sites" in College and Research Libraries News.