Sources for Codebooks and Questionnaires

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)

ICPSR is the largest repository of social science numeric research files in the U.S., with a membership composed of academic and research institutions. Because Cornell participates in its ICPSR Direct program, you can download files directly from the ICPSR site. You have to register as an ICPSR Direct user and use the site from a Cornell IP or via the Cornell University Library link. Most codebooks can be freely downloaded.

Studies may be searched by keywords in the study description or browsed under broad categories. Codebooks are in PDF or plain text format. 

Tips on finding questions on the ICPSR website.

RoperCenter for Public Opinion Research

Search words as they appear in summaries, dates a survey was conducted, survey organization (e.g., Roper, Gallup, Yankelovich), sponsor (CNN, Time) and type of sample (e.g., national adult, undergraduate students, physicians, teenagers)

Many, but not all, studies have a machine-readable codebook that recreates the survey. Most U.S. surveys can be downloaded as datasets (codebook, numeric files) via Roper Express service; look for the RoperExpress icon.

More information about finding questions in Roper.

CISER Data Archive

The Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research houses an extensive collection of numeric files in the social sciences, with emphasis on demography, economics and labor, political and social behavior, family life and health.  Search and browse titles and abstracts (for about half of the the studies). Most files on the CISER server are downloaded in zip format.  Keep in mind that many studies don't have machine-readable documentation. 

View the following link for help in searching the CISER data archive for questions.

Finding questions in Question Banks

Association of Religion Data Archives, Pennsylvania State University

Search the surveys and their questions by keywords or browse studies by population surveyed (national, regional focus, congregants, religious professionals). Add questions to a personalized Question Bank, then save results for later display or download.

Polling the Nations:  The Ultimate Survey Database

Over 300,000 questions from more than 14,000 surveys conducted in the US and abroad from 1986+.  Search by words in question text, geographic area, date, or use the browse feature (“List of Topics”).  Add questions to an Export Cart to download.

iPOLL, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

iPOLL requires that you create an account as a Cornell user to use all site features. Contains approximately 500,000 questions from surveys conducted in the U.S., some back to the 1940s. iPOLL searches words in the text of questions and question responses. In most cases, you can retrieve all questions from the same survey.  iPOLL also has a bookmark feature if you want to re-run the search later.  Some questions link to the Roper Express RoperExpress function to download the entire dataset (data and documentation) and perform simple statistical analyses. More on Roper Express service is here.

American National Election Studies
 

There are two ways to access the questions and question back for ANES

ANES 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012

This option lists the concepts/topics by category and you are able to see the years the
question was asked. 

Search ANES Time Series questions and variable documentation

This option allows you to search ANES Time Series study codebooks to identify questions and
variables by keyword.

Survey Data Netherlands - LISS Panel Data Archive

Questions can be obtained from Data Archives from around the world.  The Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel data archive is one example.  The study has been conducted since October 2007 and may provide a different aspect of questions.

UK Data Service Variable and Question Bank

The UK Data services allows you to search across hundreds of studies accessible through the UK Data Archive.

What can CCSS do for you?

Logo for Cornell Center for Social Sciences

The Cornell Center for Social Sciences (CCSS) provides Cornell researchers with comprehensive and advanced research support in the social sciences. This section of the guide provides additional information on its services.

Email CCSS-ResearchSupport@cornell.edu for assistance.

The Help Desk FAQs also provides useful information.

 

 

Finding survey items in the scholarly literature

Another approach to finding survey instruments and questionnaires is to search the scholarly literature using specific search terms.  Add search terms like "survey instrument", "research instrument", or "questionnaire", along with your topic keywords using "AND".  The articles you find will likely include the survey instrument in their appendices or will provide a reference to the survey instrument used in the bibliography.

Try this technique in the following databases.

SocINDEX

Search for keywords related to your topic in addition to research instrument terms as in the following example:

public education AND (research instruments OR questionnaires OR survey instruments)

Sociological Abstracts

Search for keywords related to your topic in addition to research instrument terms as in the following example:

(public education) AND (research instruments OR survey instruments)