Political Science 138:
Quantitative Reasoning in Political Science

HW11:  Retrieving Survey Data from the Internet

These sites require registration:

• International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) <register here>
• The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) (register here)

In-class:

Prepare a chart similar to this:

QiKuzu5

Step one: International Social Survey Programme (ISSP); choose Archive and data ;

Step two: Select survey (e.g. Religion II);  choose: Full online access to ISSP 1998 via ZACAT (reg. required)
Step Three:  Choose Variable Description: Archive and ID variable and substantive variable
       on the right hand screen, choose Table.

QiKuzu5

Step Four: specify country codes for the row variable
   (click on v3: Country; select add to rows (login if requested)

Step Five : specify a substantial variable for the columns.    (click on the variable; select add to columns)     [note after clicking on the variable, you may have                to scroll up for the add-to box]

Step Six: Select row percentages in the Type box.

Step Six: Save the results as an Excel file:

     (click on the Excel button in the upper right hand corner).

      [Note the Excel file will be saved with the name Velocity -- with no file extension:
        to convert the file name so Excel will open it, rename the file with a .xls extension,
        e.g.: Velocity.xls, or Hello.xls ]

Step Seven: Open the file in Excel, construct the chart.

       [Note you may want to add columns together, in the example above, the "definately"
        and probably columns]

Assignment:
Prepare a table or Chart summarizing survey data on your data profile topic.
Be sure to refer to the sampling error of the survey.
See also: Survey data tabulation.

see also: Tips on Using Polling Data

Education data.

Topics of interest might be: how the public "grades" the public schools.

This assignment involves accessing national polling data on your data profile assignment topic and downloading the data (or, if it is just a few numbers, copying it to an excel spreadsheet.  The Data sources available on-line include the following:

PollingReport.com   Covers many polling organizations on many topics.

Phi Delta Kappan Education Polls Annual polls on education topics.

The Public Agenda Online:   Provides public opinion data on a variety of issues.  Click on one of the links below.  To view the polling data on the issue, click on the links under the right-hand "Public Opinion" column.   Underneath the charts and graphs, there is often a link to View more details, where the actual data, the question wording, the date of the survey and the polling Organization are shown.  One limitation of this website is that the data cannot be copied or opened in Excel.  You have to write it down and enter it yourself. 

abortion
crime
education

1972-2002 General Social Survey Cumulative File

This is the cumulative data file of all GSS surveys from 1972 through 1996.  Many of the questions were asked in multiple years. 

The items appearing on the surveys are one of three types: Permanent questions that occur on each survey, rotating questions that appear on two out of every three surveys (1973, 1974, and 1976, or 1973, 1975, and 1976), and a few occasional questions such as split ballot experiments that occur in a single survey. Starting in 1988 items no longer rotate across years but appear on two-thirds of the cases every year.

How to retrieve the results into Excel:

• begin with "extra codebook window" to find variables (questions) on your topic. 
• browse "group headings" for to find variables related to your  topic:
•  (back in the original window) select "Frequencies or crosstabulation"
• use "year" as row variable
• type your topic variable name as column variable
• select "percentaging" across rows:
• use "sex" or "race" as control variables (this is optional)
• unselect "color coding"

Importing the results into Excel.

• Save the file from the Netscape BROWSER, (File | Save)
• Open Excel and open the file with File | Open
• Now clip out the data that you want -- the years and percentage tabulations:
  • Highlight the cells in the column with the years
  • Select Format | Cells | Alignment and uncheck the "merge cells" box.
  • Highlight the cells with the years and the percentages
  • sort the data on the years column (column B).

American National Election Study, time series tabulations 1952-92

The ANES is conducted every two years (every national election year).  This site provides times series trend data for many of the questions.  For example, here are the results for the Voting question.