Content
- Thousands of polls from sources such as major network news organizations (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.); major newspapers (New York Times, etc.); higher ed (Quinnipiac College, etc.); polling orgs and research institutes (Gallup, Pew Research Center, etc.); trade associations; non-profit organizations; etc.
- When you view an individual poll, you can generate a graph of the results (which are downloaded to your computer as a CSV file that can be opened in Excel).
Navigation
- Search by topic (from an overly long drop down list); full-text search; geography (another overly-long drop down list); date range; source (another overly-long drop down list); Results (I don’t think users will easily figure out how this differs from the topic list).
- You can change the search interface above to one that has no drop down lists but instead search boxes for each field
- Full text searching vs. Results searching (results are the answers or polling options presented to the poll respondents) are odd. I’m not sure if the Results index is part of the larger Full Text index; it doesn’t appear to be. I searched in Results for “filtering” and found a poll from a 1999 Wirthlin Report that included “filtering” in the answer choices for the poll. When I did a full text search for “filtering,” I was unable to find that same report. So it would seem that the full text index does not include the words in the results index (unless this one search I did was an anomaly).
- When you view a poll, you see most of the fielded data except for the “Topics” field, which is too bad, as that would help users understand how the topics index works and make navigation of the system more apparent to the user (much as subject headings/descriptors in a database can help with this).
Sharing and Linking
- Each poll has a stable URL that can be copied from the address window in your browser.
My Take
- Polling data is something we are frequently asked for at the desk. Without a tool like this, finding that content is difficult. I don’t know how comprehensive it is including every poll from the leading polling organizations, though.
- The graphing feature is a real plus for students who ask us for charts or graphs of information.
- If the subscription is under $2000-$3000, I’d say we should find a way to get it.