Polling the Nations

From my favorite corner in the Library, I've been observing that paper writing season is in full swing.  Law students researching public policy issues this semester--such as immigration, environment and energy, health care and bioethics, criminal justice, and gun control--often need data reflecting public opinion, whether currently, at a historical point in time, or over several decades of debate and change. This is a good time to remind everyone that Polling the Nations, one of the best opinion poll research databases, is available to all Hofstra students from the Hofstra University Libraries research databases page. Remote access will require a network login.

Polling the Nations includes public opinion survey data from the United States generally, from individual states and cities, and from over 100 other countries. Coverage is from 1986 to the present, updated weekly.  Polls from hundreds of the most reputable and reliable polling organizations, such as CBS and ABC News, Pew Research Center, Quinnipiac University, Gallup, Roper, and the Kaiser Family Foundation, and from a wide range of special interest organizations, are searchable by topic, keyword, geographic area, date, and source organization.  When you need reliable data to support a statement about public opinion on public policy, here or abroad, Polling the Nations is a great place to begin.  

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat