More About the Roper Center

The Roper Center is an archive—it preserves the data from polls conducted by many leading survey organizations for the use of researchers, students, and journalists.

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research was founded in 1947 to preserve data from surveys of public opinion. Elmo Roper and others in the emerging field of survey research recognized that the information they were gathering should be preserved for future generations of scholars, students, and journalists. Since that time, the Roper Center has continued to acquire and archive public opinion data. Its collection now includes 17,000 datasets and continues to grow by hundreds of datasets per year. In total, it includes responses from millions of individuals on a vast range of topics. Since its beginning, the Roper Center has focused on surveys conducted by the news media and commercial polling firms. However, it also holds many academic surveys, including important historical collections from the National Opinion Research Corporation and Princeton University's Office of Public Opinion Research.

Most of the surveys in the Roper Center are national samples, but there are also some state and local surveys, as well as a number of surveys of special populations of interest. Nearly all of the surveys are based on representative samples drawn according to the best practices of the time. The Roper Center now focuses on data from the United States, but continues to acquire some surveys from other parts of the world, particularly Latin America.

The Roper Center has a strong presence in the public opinion community and maintains cooperative relationships with other archives around the world. Its Board of Directors contains representatives from both academic and commercial public opinion research. Data from the Roper Center provide a valuable resource for academic researchers, journalists, students, and the general public. The Roper Center also contributes to education at the University of Connecticut . Although the Roper Center does not offer any degree programs, it works with a wide range of programs-including the departments of Political Science, Sociology, and Statistics—in giving employment and research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students.

For further information please contact The Roper Center at 860.486.4440 or rcweb@ropercenter.uconn.edu.

Top