About The Field Poll

The Field (California) Poll has operated continuously since 1947 as an independent, non-partisan, media-sponsored public opinion news service and has issued over 2,000 different reports.

During its long history, The Field Poll has acquired a national reputation as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of public opinion trends in California. News stories quoting The Field Poll appear regularly in national and state media. References to findings derived from the poll appear in hundreds of published works by scholars, political and social writers.

Accessing Field Polls

Field Poll data are provided though an arrangement with UCDATA at the University of California at Berkeley. Go to http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/data_record.php?recid=3 and follow the instructions found there.

Notes:

• While most Field Polls are available to the public, recent polls are embargoed and are available only to UC and CSU students, faculty, and staff. When accessing embargoed files, you agree not to share the data with anyone other than students, faculty, or staff of the University of California or the California State University.
• Published work or any form of public dissemination must include the following disclaimer: Data for this study, originally collected by the Field Research Corporation, were provided by the University of California Data Archive & Technical Assistance (UCDATA). UCDATA is not responsible for the analysis and interpretation of the data appearing here.
• Access to these embargoed files is IP authenticated, and is not available from off-campus computers.

Setting Up Your Browser to Download Files from UCDATA

The instructions provided here are for Microsoft Internet Explorer running under Windows. Other browsers (e.g., Firefox, Safari, etc.), may also be used to access the Field Poll data.

Your browser must be configured properly in order to download Field poll data from UC Berkeley. The first requirement is that your browser be set to use passive FTP.

• Go to Tools>Internet Options and select the Advanced tab.
• Scroll down to the “Use Passive FTP (for firewall and DSL modem compatibility)” option and make sure that it is checked.

Your second browser configuration choice is to decide whether to set your FTP access for folder view, which will display the FTP directories as folders, much like your Windows desktop. If you choose to leave this turned off, then your FTP directories will display as an FTP directory listings with links from the directory names to the directory contents (much like DOS for you old-timers). You will be able to access the data whichever option you choose, but you will have a few more download options with the FTP directory listings.

When you have made your configuration changes, click OK.

Note: Some university labs may be set up so that users cannot change the Internet Options. In those situations you will need to work with your system administrator to get these changes made.

Additional Resources

Field Poll Home Page: http://www.field.com/

SSRIC Field Poll Guide: http://www.ssric.org/data/field_polls

UC DATA Home Page: http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/

Field Poll News Releases and California Opinion Indexes: http://field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/

Last Updated: January 29, 2009