Library Briefings

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Roper Center offers unlimited access to public opinion data

The Library’s membership to the Roper Center (http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/) now allows Northwestern students and faculty to use RoperExpress, a new service offering unlimited access to public opinion data. Through RoperExpress, students and faculty will now be able to download their own datasets without mediation by the Library's Data Services staff.

Roper boasts the largest public opinion library available anywhere in the world, and maintains search and retrieval tools for accessing these rich resources through its web site. Seventy-five percent of datasets in the Roper collection can be downloaded in ASCII or SPSS portable formats. This makes it relatively easy for researchers of all levels to access public opinion data from leading research organizations such as the Gallup Organization, the National Opinion Research Center, Harris Interactive, and The New York Times.

Roper provides access to aggregate public opinion information through its iPOLL service, available to Northwestern faculty and students since 2003, which is the most complete, current source of U.S. national public opinion data. It includes nearly a half-million questions asked through public opinion surveys since 1935 by a variety of academic, commercial, and media survey organizations.

The Center also provides access to the National Science Foundation's Surveys of Public Attitudes Toward and Understanding of Science and Technology from 1979-2001. These surveys have been used to monitor public attitudes toward a variety of science-related issues and topics, and to study scientific literacy among the general public as well as attitudes toward various public policy issues.

A powerful resource for Northwestern students and faculty, the Roper Center web site features data that are international as well as multidisciplinary. There is an extensive collection of Japanese and Hispanic survey study data, as well as datasets by topic including crime, education, social stratification, and women’s issues, to name just a few. New topical data sets are added each month.

For assistance with RoperExpress and other Roper data sets, please contact Kathleen Murphy, Data Services Librarian (kemurphy@northwestern.edu) or Jiuping Chen, Data Services Technical Consultant (j-chen6@northwestern.edu).