Collaborative Research: The American Mass Public in The 1930s and 1940s

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The study of individual-level public opinion and behavior has flourished in recentdecades. But understanding of the dynamics of mass opinion prior to the 1950s hasbeen undermined by the absence of high-quality, individual-level data. Over 450 nationalopinion polls were conducted from 1935-1945. However, these surveys have not beenexploited by the social science community because they are not easily usable. The dataoften contains numerous miscodings and other errors. In addition, the surveys employednow-discredited quota sampling procedures. The principal investigators recode thedatasets and implement and disseminate methods appropriate for analyzing this historicalpublic opinion data. By applying methods that make quota sample data usable, thisproject opens up a new realm for public opinion research in the U.S. and othercountries, such as England, that have used quota-sampling methods.Recovering this early opinion data promises to illuminate critical questionsconcerning the role of the mass public in the political system. The public opinion pollsfrom this time contain a plethora of valuable items measuring attitudes concerningeconomic policy, World War II, and racial relations. The principal investigators usethe polling data on attitudes toward international intervention to determine how the masspublic guided and reacted to foreign policy decisions during the Second World War,thereby expanding the systematic study of public opinion and war to include the mostsignificant international conflict in American history. The principal investigators alsouse the opinion data on domestic policy as a resource for examining the relationshipbetween the mass public and both the programmatic accomplishments and limitations ofthe New Deal.Broader Impacts Resulting from the Proposed ActivityThis project makes available to the social science research community a troveof public opinion data that has largely been ignored in the past. The principalinvestigators compile and produce readily usable computer files for roughly 450opinion polls undertaken in the United States from 1935 to 1945. These files areavailable through the Roper Center in Storrs, CT. However these data are almostimpossible to use in their existing condition. The principal investigators recode theindividual files, prepare documentation, and make available a series of weights tomitigate the biases resulting from quota-control sampling. The investigators alsocompile the individual polls into a series of cumulative datasets. These efforts makethe data more easily accessible to the larger social science research community.The project also promises to expand the field of political behavior by promotingthe study of historical public opinion. It provides to the community of scholars awealth of individual-level opinion data in the pre-1950 era, allowing researchers to gainnew insights into an array of substantively important topics, such as changes inAmericans' racial attitudes and public support for the early American welfare state.