the poll and survey report collection of the norc library, university of Chicago

Background

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) library was founded soon after NORC was established in 1941. The library's purpose, then as now, is to provide library and information services to the staff of NORC and to the scholarly and interested public. The services fall into three categories: maintenance of a book and periodical collection closely aligned with the substantive and methodological work of the organization; the provision of information office services about NORC research and publications and about survey research in general; the maintenance of an archive of machine-readable data files that result from NORC projects.

This article highlights the special collection of poll and survey results. It would be useful for our discussion to distinguish between polls and surveys.¹ Although both use the same method — the collection of information about a human population by means of direct contact with the units of the study (individuals, organizations) by systematic means such as a questionnaire — there are important differences in purpose, content, and method of reporting.

The purpose of most public opinion polls is to moniter the population's attitudes, behavior, and opinions on topics of timely interest. Political events — campaigns and elections — are a major subject of polling, although any newsworthy item may be covered. Such topics of enduring interest such as church attendance, presidential popularity, or the most admired person are surveyed regularly. Polls are usually conducted by commercial agencies such as the Gallup Organization or Louis Harris and Associates. Due to the need for timeliness, polls tend to be conducted often — Gallup may, for example, conduct several a month — to include only a few questions on any one topic, and to be reported quickly to the news media by means of poll releases to which users subscribe. Some polls are reported directly to the public by the agency conducting them, as for example the television news polls done by ABC, CBS, and NBC, and are conducted less often but more or less on the same sort of topics. These polls are also reported in print by means of poll summaries (as opposed to poll releases) which are sent to subscribers about once a month.

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Surveys, on the other hand, are usually conducted to study a particular topic in depth for scholarly or academic purposes in the social sciences, for public relations and enlightenment (sponsored by civic-minded commercial companies), or to guide decision makers in setting policy (usually sponsored by governments). Surveys are conducted less often and typically contain dozens of questions on a single topic. Reporting of surveys usually takes longer than reporting of polls due to the greater complexity of information — often as long as a year after data collection.

Poll releases are usually a page or two long, devoted to one subject and dated with the earliest date by which the information may be used by subscribers. Generally a release will contain some written analysis of the results which are presented in tabular form. Releases intended for newspapers contain suggested headlines. Poll summaries, on the other hand, are issued by television news polls and usually cover more subjects with some written analysis along with many tables of results.

Survey reports look much like the usual report literature — often cheaply printed and bound and about one hundred to one hundred fifty pages long. More complex analysis of the data may be found, although many survey reports are straight forward presentations of the results without elaborate statistical analysis. Survey reports are not issued on a set schedule. Many of these reports are in print and may be found in libraries; however, a large part of this literature is elusive, since many reports are not widely distributed or sold by regular publishers.

The NORC library maintains a retrospective collection of poll and survey reports and tries to keep up with the output of the larger national and regional polling organizations. Besides the collection of actual poll releases and survey reports, an attempt is made to collect secondary reports of the activity — compendia, bibliographies, directories, and the like.

The special collection of poll and survey reports was apparently started in support of the journal Opinion News which was published at NORC from September 1943, to October 1948. Opinion News included reports on NORC research as well as a roundup of results of polls and surveys from around the world. When the journal ceased to exist, the receipt of most poll releases was discontinued, particularly from foreign sources, however, the files for the period have been retained. Subscriptions to the national and regional domestic polls have been maintained to the present, along with an effort to collect reports of surveys.

Description of the Collection

A description of the collection will be given in two parts, historical (no longer received) and current. Details and more information are available on request.

Historical collection: There are about thirty domestic polls which are no longer received, many of which no longer exist. Examples (with our time period coverage in parentheses) are the Minnesota Poll (1944-1975), the New Jersey Poll (1947-50), and Wallace's Homestead Poll (1942-1958). In addition there are about twenty-five foreign polls no longer received. Examples are the Australian Gallup Poll (1942-1968), the British Institute of Public Opinion 0949-1956), and the Italian Institute of Public Opinion (DOXA, 1947-1952). This collection provides a fairly good coverage of the poll reporting that took place in the 1940s, since it is the Opinion News period when we presume an effort was made to include most of the existing polls. After the demise of Opinion News the coverage gets thin and scattered.

Most of the survey reports from the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University, from the 1950s to 1977, when it ceased to exist, are on file, as are many of the reports of the two other major academic survey centers, the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan and the Survey Research Center, University of California-Berkeley. Although not as extensive as the historical poll release files, survey reports are on file from a few other agencies such as the Washington Public Opinion Research Library and People's Research Corporation. Many individual reports of surveys from a wide variety of sources also can be found in the general library collection. The survey report literature in the collection is a fairly complete coverage of the output of academic survey reporting since the three centers mentioned (with NORC) were the major actors in the field during the 1940s and 50s. It is difficult to say how well the collection covers survey reports from other sources.

A fairly detailed listing of poll and survey reports from the past that are in the collection can be found in Illinois Libraries and Information Centers (Chicago-Illinois Regional Library Council, 1981), on pages 385-386.

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Current collection: The library currently receives seven domestic national polls, three domestic regional polls, and one foreign poll, as follows:

Domestic-National:
ABC News/Washington Post Poll (1981-)
CBS News Poll (1979-)
Gallup Poll (1936-)
Harris Poll (1964-)
Los Angeles Times Poll (1979-)
Merit Poll (1981-)
NBC News Poll (1977-)

Domestic-Regional:
California Poll (1947-)
Iowa Poll (1943-)
Ohio Poll (1981-)

Foreign:
Canadian Gallup Poll (1942-)

The coverage of current national polls is fairly complete, but increasingly thin for state polls. However, a number of state polls have begun under the auspices of the Network of State Polls, and the NORC library is trying to make arrangements to receive results on a regular basis.

Of particular interest is the collection of recent survey reports issued by major national polling agencies under the sponsorship of large commercial companies. These reports, released with great fanfare, are not usually widely distributed and are thus not acquired by many libraries. The subject matter is, however, of current interest and often used to flesh out poll reports on the same subjects. Examples are the reports on the family sponsored by General Mills and conducted by Louis Harris and Associates, and the report Americans and their money recently conducted by Lieberman Research for Money Magazine. The coverage of the survey report literature is by no means complete, since there is no mechanism by which such reports are regularly distributed. Reports of the academic survey agencies have proliferated along with the numbers of such centers; such reports are acquired selectively to enhance materials already in the NORC collection. Information about the activities and production of academic centers is, however, sought after and filed.

Uses and Users

The results of polls and surveys are primarily used for research in the social sciences, especially studies of trends over time. The NORC collection is used intensively by several in-house projects concerned with the study of social change. In addition, students and faculty from the University of Chicago and from schools in the Chicago metropolitan arears use the collection mostly for short-term research and course papers. There has always been a fair use by people in the media, mostly for a quick reading on a particular topic being covered in a news feature. This use is increasing as news commentators learn about the possible uses of social science research and particularly the usefulness of current and past poll results in giving news stories historical depth.

Bibliographical Control and Access

All current polls are listed as received with titles supplied where absent or augmented to highlight content. No further bibliographical control is done since the major polls (Gallup and Harris) now issue regular indexes while experience has shown that access via lists is usually sufficient for the one-time casual user. More serious users tend to create their own indexes on an ad hoc basis or to gain access via question indexes maintained by the data archives that hold the original machine-readable data for the surveys. Other secondary sources — compendia lists, reviews, and the like — are collected to help users access the collection. Survey reports are cataloged as monographs and added to the collection.

The library makes every effort to acquire devices that would enhance access, not only to the poll and survey report collection but also to the wide-ranging field of opinion and survey research in general. Although the poll and survey report special collection is an important part of the whole operation, the collection in its entirety and its reference components is available to anyone who wants to use the literature of public opinion research.

The collection is open to all. Personal visits are best, although letter and telephone consultation is invited. Telephone first before visiting to be sure materials are available and to set a time for a visit. More extensive services — searches by the staff, for example — are available on a cost basis. For information on any aspect of the collection and its services contact the following:

Patrick Bova, Librarian
Michael Worley, Assistant Librarian
NORC Library
6030 South Ellis Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60637
(312) 962-1213 or 962-1014, (or 962-1200 for messages)

Footnotes

1. Portions of this discussion related to definitions of polls and surveys are paraphrased from Chapter 1 of Donald P. Warwick and Charles A. Lininger: The sample survey: Theory and practice. New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1975, pp. 1-3.

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