Data Services Mediates Access to Gallup World Poll and U.S. Daily Tracking Respondent-Level Data

NYU Libraries has provides access to a range of Gallup public opinion polling data through the Gallup Analytics tool, the Roper Data Archive, and the Gallup Poll interface. Through these tools (with the exception of some datasets in Roper), users can access public opinion data and export data aggregated at the country level.

Now, individuals in the NYU community can access Gallup World Poll and U.S. Daily Tracking Poll data at the respondent level, which provides a much-enhanced ability to trace connections between concepts and people. The years of coverage are roughly from 2008 – present. Also, beginning in 2020, NYU Libraries also has added access to respondent-level data for the Gallup Poll Social Series (GPSS) and the Gallup Panel COVID 19 Survey. Each of these separate datasets and studies is described below.

Table of Contents

How to Request Access to Gallup World Poll

In order to access respondent-level data for Gallup World Poll, you first need to be a current NYU faculty, student, or staff member. We recommend that you read the Gallup World Poll Methodology but also read through the World Poll Codebook. The codebook gives you an overview of all variables present, and you can discover what you need by doing some Ctrl+F searching in the PDF document. Your data extract request should be informed by a research question that has some logical boundaries.

To help the Data Services team access the subset of data that you need, all you have to do from here is get back to us with a list of variables from the data you would like. This list should (ideally) encompass theme, place, and timespan. For example, if your research question is about perception of gender equity in European Union countries, your request list might look something like this:

D7 – What is your gender?
D6 – What is your race?
UCLA3A – Do you describe yourself as male, female, or transgender?
WP1223 – What is your marital status?
WP1146 – “…women should hold leadership…”
WP646 – “…women should have same rights as men…”
Countries – (e.g., France, Germany, Italy, Spain)
Dates (e.g., 2008-2012)

This list is meant to be a sample; your request will likely contain many more variables. Once we have the list of variables you need, we will compile a data extract and deliver it to you.

Additional Notes: Indicators like gender or educational attainment, which may be useful for your analysis but not directly related to your question, exist as their own question QTAGs (variables), so you may want to request the inclusion of these for more robust analysis. Also note that the data includes methodological variables that may be useful for analysis (e.g., D9 “How many adults are in your household,”) may be useful as well, and you should request these. Also note that the phraseology of the questions changes slightly from year to year, and if you are interested in creating time series analyses, you may need to request variables that are related conceptually but are distinct in the layout of this data.

Note also that the PDF we have created is meant to be an introduction to the data. There are many more questions in the World Poll survey, and these can also be discovered by creating an account with Gallup’s World Poll Reference Tool. The Reference Tool is not the source of the data itself but instead a search mechanism to discover which questions were asked in specific countries during specific years. You can use this tool to locate variables you’d like to extract. Refer to the World Poll Reference Tool Guidebook for instructions on creating an account and performing searches.

There are several ways you can discover which questions or data is available. You can search by place (country), year, and theme or topic. Say you are interested in researching the concept of happiness in the world. You can enter a keyword search for “happiness”:It helps to enter keywords that are liable to be included in the text of a question itself. Once you discover relevant question(s), you can expand the interface and see the specific QTAG, study completion dates, and countries covered. For the sake of ease, you can even export information on question coverage into a .CSV.

How to Request Gallup U.S. Daily Tracking

Getting access to respondent-level data from the Gallup U.S. Daily Tracking is a similar process. There is no comparable discovery tool for U.S. Daily Tracking poll questions; instead, users are encouraged to search in the codebooks listed below. We have also created a matrix of available variables across years for your reference. Follow the same process of assembling question variable as described in the World Poll section above. The only significant difference is that you will want to indicate variables that you want that specify the geographic location of the respondent. And because of the mixed-methdology approach of gathering the data (see the U.S. Daily Tracking Poll Methodology), we highly recommend that you request weight variables as well.

How to Request Gallup GPSS Datasets

The Gallup Poll Social Series (GPSS) dataset is a set of public opinion surveys designed to monitor U.S. adults’ views on numerous social, economic, and political topics. The topics are arranged thematically across 12 surveys and change each month. Gallup administers these surveys during the same month every year and includes the survey’s core trend questions in the same order each administration (see GPSS methodology). Using this consistent standard allows for unprecedented analysis of changes in trend data that are not susceptible to question order bias and seasonal effects.

NYU’s respondent-level data coverage of this series goes back to January of 2019. Each month has its own codebook (see below), and while the themes of each month’s data are focused, many core questions tend to get asked in multiple surveys. And while the structure, methodology, and sample size is roughly equivalent across months, there are some particularities to each unique survey, so like the U.S. Daily Tracking data, we recommend requesting weighting variables as well. To make a data request, indicate which survey you want and which variables you would like in your extract. Note that access to this data must be mediated by NYU Data Services.

How to Request Access to the COVID-19 Panel Data

The COVID-19 web survey began on March 13, 2020 with daily random samples of U.S. adults, aged 18 and older who are members of the Gallup Panel. Approximately 1,200 daily responses were collected from March 13 through April 26, 2020. From April 27 to August 16, 2020 approximately 500 daily responses are being collected. Starting August 17, 2020, the survey moved from daily surveying to a survey conducted one time per month over a two-week field period (typically the last two weeks of the month).

The Gallup Panel is a probability-based, nationally representative panel of U.S. adults. Members are randomly selected using random-digit-dial phone interviews that cover landline and cellphones and address-based sampling methods. The Gallup Panel is not an opt-in panel. Gallup weights the obtained samples each day to adjust for the probability of select and to correct for nonresponse bias. Nonresponse adjustments are made by adjusting the sample to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education and region. Demographic weighting targets are based on the most recent Current Population Survey figures for the aged-18-and-older U.S. population.

In order to request an extract of this data, please get in touch with Data Services and indicate which variables you would like.

Full List of Codebooks

To help make working with the data a little easier once you’ve gotten access to it, we’ve generated some codebooks to interpret the variables and range of answers within each question. Note that these change over time, so refer to the codebooks below for each year. Unfortunately, there is no common search tool to search across all years, as there is with the Gallup World Poll.

World Poll:

U.S. Daily:

Gallup GPSS:

Codebooks for 2019-2020 GPSS

COVID 19 Panel Survey:

March 15, 2020 – October 1, 2020 Methodology and Codebook

Data Updates

Note that we receive batch updates of data once per quarter for the U.S. Daily Tracking, WorldPoll, GPSS, and COVID Panel data. The WorldPoll data is aggregated into a single file at the end of each year.

What is Gallup World Poll and U.S. Daily Tracking?

Gallup World Poll or U.S. Daily Tracking respondent-level data are developed by collectors who call people in countries that have high access to telephones. Or, in the case of countries that have low access to phones, survey staff actually go on the ground and ask questions relating to economic confidence, quality of life, food access, freedom of media, practice of religion, and other core indicators. Note that the exact text of each question and the exact place its asked can vary; not every question is asked in the same place each year, and the phrasing of each question is meant to approximate a common meaning across language and culture.

The U.S. Daily Tracking poll works similarly. 350 days per year, 1000 random U.S. adults are asked questions pertaining to economic confidence and quality of life. See the full description of the survey here. Part of what makes Gallup data so reliable is its built-in weighting variables to account for variance in the sample. In all, Gallup is one of the most comprehensive and well-documented public opinion surveys that exists, and having full access to the respondent-level data is a great step for the NYU community.

Questions

If you have any questions about accessing Gallup’s respondent-level data for World Poll, U.S. Daily Tracking, GPSS, or the COVID-19 Panel at NYU, don’t hesitate to reach out to Data Services (data.services@nyu.edu).