Guides & Bibliographies

Polling the Nations

Introduction

Polling the Nations, which calls itself the "ultimate survey database," contains a huge collection of public opinion survey information from the United States and more than 100 other countries around the world. The database includes the text of survey questions and responses (1986 to the present) covering a broad range of issues. Over 14,000 surveys from over one thousand polling organizations such as television networks, universities, newspapers, businesses, associations, Gallop Poll, Roper Organization and others are included. All the surveys reported were conducted using scientifically selected random samples. Each of the 500,000 records reports a question asked and the responses given. Also included in each record is the polling organization that conducted the work, the date the interviews were conducted, the release date of the information, the sample size and the universe.

Polling the Nations is available to current UT Arlington faculty & students at this webaddress:

eresource.uta.edu/cgi-bin/db-pollnations.cgi

Searching

A truncation symbol in Polling the Nations is an asterisk (*), and when this symbol is put at the end of a word, the database will be searched for all of the possible endings--suffixes--for that word. For example, the command "homeless*" will have the computer search engine look for all possible endings of this word. It should find, "homeless" and "homelessness."

A phrase is indicated with quotation marks ("") so that words that are surrounded by quotation marks are searched as a single string. For example, "social work" will be searched as a two word phrase.

Two Boolean operators that are important in finding information are AND and OR. The AND is used to connect two different concepts and the OR is used between concepts that are synonymous. It is critical to put parentheses around a search expression that contains an OR. Here is an example:

(homeless* OR RUNAWAY*) AND (POLICY OR POLICIES)

The first part of this statement will find material about the homeless population and runaways. The second part will look for the words "policy" or "policies". The AND then links the first set with the second. This might be an effective way to look for polling information about policy or policies for persons attempting to live without benefit of shelter.

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Last Modified: 2006 August 5
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