Polling within a Country
Above is a link to download pages 91-97 of the Electronic Website Guide to Worldwide Institutions Measuring Public Opinion, a great country-by-country list of polling organizations that is now a bit old, but it can still help! It gives the web address for each. If it turns out the web address isn't current, you can search in Google by the name of the organization to try to get more current web address.
Because the results of polls often appear in newspaper articles, you can search Factiva, in particular, for the results of polls and also to get the names of polling services. You can then search for them online. It is not easy to do this kind of search, however. Watch the short YouTube video below to see an example of such a search for opinion polls in Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iWYr35T2oI&feature=youtube_gdata
Finding Opinion Poll News
Factiva seems to find the most information from other countries in major news sources, in English and in the local language! The example below is full of nitty-gritty details that are of EXTREME importance, so look closely!
If I were searching for recent polling data on Polish public opinion on Covid and vaccinations as reported in English language sources in Poland, I would do the search described below. Note I selected REGION: POLAND and DATE in the last YEAR.
And below is the basic search statement. Copy it but replace the (covid* or vaccine*) section with words describing your topic of interest.
(public near4 opinion or opinion near4 poll*) AND wc>1000 AND (covid* or vaccine*)
- Factiva This link opens in a new windowThis Dow Jones database has articles from thousands of business publications as well as company and financial information. It is also a gold mine of international news sources in English and many, many foreign languages.It is updated continuously.
Multiple Country & International Poll & Survey Data Sources
These are some major well-known international polls. These are particularly useful if you want to COMPARE countries. The websites listed below all offer some data for free online. Pay attention to the short descriptions!
- Eurobarometer: European Commission Public OpinionThis is the website for the Public Opinion Analysis sector of the European Commission which has been collecting opinion since 1974 from Eurobarometers of member states. You can access those core reports as well as all sorts of others on this site. See next site listed here for additional European states included since 1991.
- New Europe Barometer"Since the spring of 1991 the CSPP has been involved in more than 100 nationwide sample surveys in post-Communist countries. Each round of surveys asks a common core of questions, a unique source for monitoring trends within nations, and comparisons across nations. All research questions and analyses are undertaken independent of government." (Homepage)
- World Public OpinionLaunched in January 2006 this site aims to "...to provide a source of in-depth information and analysis on public opinion from around the world on international issues" (from their "About" page). They pull information from a wide variety of sources. Their "Other Poll Sources" page will lead you to the major regional polling organizations.
- Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP)LAPOP has been collecting data on public opinion in Latin America since the 1970s, and they have been producing AmericasBarometer since 2004. Although, access to the actual survey data in full is only available for a fee or by subscription, you can get full reports written based on the data by clicking on PUBLICATIONS and selecting INDIVIDUAL COUNTRY STUDIES. Their Insights series, in Spanish & English, publishes brief, current analysis every two weeks, archived back to 2008.
- Afrobarometer-Africa Public Opinion ResearchThis project has been surveying more than a dozen African nations since 1993 on a variety of topics. Various publications resulting from these surveys are available here, including survey results, briefing papers, and working papers.
- AsiabarometerAlthough you cannot actually access the data here, if you click on PUBLICATIONS and select a year, you will get a list of publications, including articles, that analyze the data. FINDINGS also provides some detailed responses to survey questions. Countries surveyed varied from year-year. In English and Japanese. Data from here is included in ICPSR.
- Asian BarometerThe Asian Barometer Survey began as the East Asia Barometer in 2000 but has expanded. Summarized data is available under SURVEY. Click on PUBLICATIONS to get a list of information published using the data.
- LatinobarometroThis nonprofit organization in Chile has been doing an annual survey of public opinion in 18 countries in Latin America since 1995. Information is available in Spanish and English.
- World Values SurveyThere have been 5 surveys since 1981. This website offers all sorts of documents conveying the information learned in those surveys. Click on FINDINGS, PAPER SERIES, & PUBLICATIONS.
- European Social Survey"The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted every two years across Europe since 2001." (from their About page) Former Soviet states and Eastern European countries may not have data for every year.
- International Social Survey Programme"The ISSP is a cross-national collaboration programme conducting annual surveys on diverse topics relevant to social sciences....Established in 1984 by its founding members Australia, Germany, Great Britain and the US, the ISSP has since included members covering various cultures around the globe. Its institutional members, each of them representing one nation, consist of academic organizations, universities, or survey agencies." (Their homepage)