About the Roper Center

Founded in 1947, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research is the leading educational facility in the field of public opinion. The Center exists to promote the intelligent, responsible and imaginative use of public opinion in addressing the problems faced by Americans and citizens of other nations. In an increasingly complex and interdependent global environment, the Roper Center hopes to foster increased international understanding and to promote cross-national research. Through the maintenance of the world's largest archive of survey data, and through its programs of publication, presentation and advanced research, the Roper Center strives to improve the practice of survey research and the use of survey data in the United States and abroad.

RoperExpress

RoperExpress makes possible immediate download of data.  Studies available through RoperExpress are marked with an icon, . 

To order studies not available for download through RoperExpress, email Ed Nelson (Sociology, CSU Fresno) at , or call him at 559/278-2275.

Roper data are made available through a license to the CSU, and are not to be provided to non-CSU personnel.

Access the Roper Center 's website from on campus:

Go to http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu

Click on “Quick Links” and then on “Search for Datasets” to locate data. Clicking on “Search Help” will get you a short description of the search procedures.  You can type keywords into the search box and limit your search to a particular date range and country. Limit your search to one word or phrase. Don't use compound searches.  Locate the study you are interested in and click on the study # for more information about that study.  The study description will include a link to the codebook. Left clicking on the link will open the codebook as a pdf file and right clicking will allow you to download the codebook to your computer.

The following is an example of a study description:

Another (probably more useful) way to search is to use iPOLL, a database of over 500,000 questions.  Click on “Quick Links” and then “iPOLL Login.” You will have to login using your email address.  The first time you use iPOLL you will have to register as a user. Once you have done this, you will not have to do it again.  Your e-mail address is your login. iPOLL allows you to search the database of questions. There is help for iPOLL available by clicking on “Boolean” and “Wildcard.”  You can get question details for each question and you can select those questions you are interested in by placing a check in the box to the left of the question.  Then you can click on “View Selections” to look at the question wording and the frequency distributions for the questions you have selected.

Access the Roper Center's website from off campus:

You can access the Roper Center's website from off campus, but you will only be able to download data or access iPOLL from on campus unless you have access through a proxy server. Check with your campus Social Science Research and Instructional Council (SSRIC) representative about this.

Additional Resources

Roper Center Home Page: http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/

Roper Newsletters and Updates: http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/dataacq/yeartodate.html

Last Updated March 27, 2006