Research Guides: How to use the Roper Center's Dataset Collection: How to use Roper Center's dataset collection

Access to Datasets

Survey Dataset Collection
A collection of public opinion survey datasets in the world by the Roper Center is accessible thousands of individual-level datasets based on surveys conducted since the 1930s including over 11,000 US studies and almost as many surveys from other countries.

Collection and search tips

To download datasets, you must register or sign into your personalized account/create a new account. With a personalized account, you can access all services remotely. The benefits are,

Save your searches—create a historical account of your searches.
Bookmark key questions and abstracts
Easily capture and download results of iPOLL searches—up to 500 questions in a single step
Link directly to study documentation and datasets ready for instant access
Search and retrieve state, US, and international datasets

⁪Tips:

The dataset catalog searches only titles, abstracts and study numbers
A RoperExpress logo indicates immediate download availability; another RoperExplore logo indicates availability of online data analysis
Quality and completeness of documentation can vary greatly for some collections
Many survey datasets are still in ASCII format and require set up files for SPSS, Stata or SAS.
Help can be found on the Roper Center website.
Some survey firms suppress data and documentation for selected variables (i.e., Gallup)
Datasets converted from IBM Column Binary to ASCII may be accompanied by a variable cross-reference guide (VXREF) which provides a re-mapping of original and new data locations for each column.