Political Science 138:
Quantitative Reasoning in Political Science

 

Lab 5:  Retrieving Survey Data from the Internet

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.

  '48 '52 '54 '56 '58 '60 '62 '64 '66 '68 '70 '72 '74 '76 '78 '80 '82 '84 '86 '88 '90 '92 '94 '96 '98 '00
No, did not vote: 36 27 ** 27 42 21 40 22 38 24 41 27 47 28 45 29 40 26 47 30 53 25 44 27 48 27
Yes, voted : 64 73 ** 73 58 79 60 78 62 76 59 73 53 72 55 71 60 74 53 70 47 75 56 73 52 73

QUESTION TEXT:

2000: In talking to people about elections, we often find that a lot of people were not able to vote because they weren't registered, they were sick, or they just didn't have time. Which of the following statements best describes you: One, I did not vote (in the election this November); Two, I thought about voting this time - but didn't; Three, I usually vote, but didn't this time; or Four, I am sure I voted?

Note:  At the bottom of the screen where the totals are displayed you can click one of the boxes for: "Percent among demographic groups who responded:"  This will give you breakdowns by demographics groups, such as by race:

Percent who (said they) voted:

  '48 '52 '54 '56 '58 '60 '62 '64 '66 '68 '70 '72 '74 '76 '78 '80 '82 '84 '86 '88 '90 '92 '94 '96 '98 '00
Whites 67 78 ** 76 60 82 63 80 63 77 61 74 55 73 56 73 61 76 55 72 50 79 59 76 54 75
Blacks 37 33 ** 35 36 53 39 65 54 68 47 65 35 65 44 67 62 66 50 60 41 67 47 65 53 73

How to convert these data to Excel.   Simply save the web page on your W:\ or H:\ drive, then open it in Excel.   (Note if you have Internet Explorer, you can simply copy the data and then paste it into Excel).  Note: delete the apostrophe before the year ('48) to display the data in excel as numeric.

The Gallup Poll Brain   (requires subscription)