Roper Center

Roper Center
Name	Roper Center
Caption	Public opinion archive
Formation	1947
Headquarters	Cornell University
Location	Ithaca, New York
Leader title	Director

Roper Center is an archival institution specializing in public opinion data and opinion research. Founded in 1947, it collects, preserves, and provides access to survey datasets, question wordings, and methodological documentation from organizations such as Gallup, Pew Research Center, NBC News, CBS News, and The New York Times. The Center serves scholars, journalists, policymakers, and students affiliated with institutions like Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, University of Michigan, and Yale University.

History

The institution was established in the postwar period amid growth in polling led by figures associated with George Gallup and Elmo Roper. Early holdings included datasets from Dewey, Truman, and other mid-20th-century campaigns, drawing material from media outlets such as Life (magazine), Time (magazine), and The Washington Post. Over decades it absorbed collections from organizations including ABC News, CBS News Polls, National Opinion Research Center, Pew Research Center, Rasmussen Reports, and Zogby International. Key events in its evolution involved partnerships with universities like University of Connecticut and archival transitions culminating in a formal affiliation with Cornell University and integration with libraries such as Cornell University Library. The Center’s archives expanded alongside developments in computational social science at institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University.

Collections and Archives

The holdings comprise survey datasets, codebooks, questionnaires, sampling frames, and interviewer instructions from organizations including Gallup, Pew Research Center, Harris Interactive, YouGov, Ipsos, NORC at the University of Chicago, and Kaiser Family Foundation. Collections cover topics addressed by entities like United Nations, World Bank, European Commission, NATO, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as well as issue-specific studies from American National Election Studies, General Social Survey, Eurobarometer, and Afrobarometer. The archive maintains materials related to presidential campaigns involving John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, and includes cross-national datasets used by scholars at London School of Economics, University of Oxford, and University of Toronto. Holdings also feature polling from media organizations such as The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Guardian, and The Economist.

Data Access and Services

Access mechanisms support researchers from centers like Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and labs such as Stanford Internet Observatory via subscription, licensing, and institutional agreements with universities including Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, and Michigan State University. Services include secure data delivery, microdata extraction, metadata curation, and harmonization compatible with software from ICPSR, SAS, StataCorp, R Project for Statistical Computing, and SPSS. The Center provides APIs and tools useful to newsrooms at Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg, NPR, and Politico, and supports reproducible research practices promoted by journals such as American Political Science Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Journal of Politics.

Research and Publications

Staff and affiliates publish methodological studies and datasets cited by scholars at Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, and New York University. Outputs inform analyses appearing in outlets like Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and disciplinary journals such as American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Analysis. The Center contributes to reports used by policy organizations including Brookings Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Urban Institute, and American Enterprise Institute. Training materials support courses at London School of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Michigan.

Governance and Funding

The Center operates with governance models involving boards and advisory committees drawing members from universities like Cornell University, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, and Yale University and from polling organizations such as Gallup, Pew Research Center, Ipsos, and YouGov. Funding sources include endowments, grants from foundations like Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and contracts with media partners including The New York Times, NBC News, and ABC News. The Center has received support for digitization and preservation from agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and collaborations with library programs at Library of Congress and Digital Public Library of America initiatives.

Impact and Partnerships

The repository supports research used by institutions including United Nations Development Programme, World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank for monitoring public attitudes. Partnerships extend to academic consortia such as Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, ICPSR, Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences and Humanities, and projects at Harvard Kennedy School. Media collaborations have benefited organizations including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC News, Al Jazeera, and CNN for polling analysis and fact-checking. The Center’s materials underpin theses and dissertations at universities like Princeton University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, Yale University, and University of California, Berkeley and inform policy briefs produced by think tanks such as Brookings Institution and RAND Corporation.

Category:Archives Category:Public opinion research