In response to user requests, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut - Storrs has made its outstanding iPOLL public opinion poll question database available for IP-authenticated searching.

iPOLL reproduces almost 400,000 individual questions from US public opinion polls conducted from 1935 to the present by survey organizations such as the Gallup Organization, the Roper Organization, Louis Harris and Associates, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago; and survey sponsors including ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post and the Associated Press. Question data are gleaned from press releases and other documentation from public opinion surveys archived by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

User registration is required to access iPOLL. However, access for Penn students, faculty, and staff is provided at no cost to individuals.

iPOLL provides the question text, appropriate responses, and the frequency percentage distribution for question responses from the survey sample. Cross-links within iPOLL permit the reconstruction of complete survey questionnaires. The Roper Center is also adding cross-links for each question to its catalog of holdings, providing access to fulltext codebooks for those survey data sets it archives.

Access to the ASCII-text raw survey data sets distributed by the Roper Center is mediated through the Penn Library. If you think you need untabulated survey data and have access to statistical processing software, visit the Penn Library Roper Center web page or contact Lauris Olson.

Alternate access to the Roper Center question database is provided through Lexis Nexis Academic's RPOLL database.

For more information:
Lauris Olson, Social Sciences Bibliographer
Sharon Black, Annenberg School Librarian