The WVS is a global network of social scientists who are analyzing the basic values and beliefs of people throughout the world. In order to monitor changes in values and understand their implications, the WVS has carried out successive waves of surveys since 1981 in over 100 countries, containing almost 90 percent of the world’s population. This project provides an unparalleled data base for the analysis of the role of human beliefs and values in social, economic and political change. Results from more than 4,000 publications demonstrate that the values of ordinary people have an important impact on a wide range of important social phenomena, ranging from human fertility rates to gender equality, and the extent to which democratic institutions emerge and flourish. 

The Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) is a three-cohort two-generation longitudinal study of national samples of public school students in the United States. The two original cohorts consisted of national probability samples of 7th and 10th grade students selected in 1987. These young adults are now 37 to 40 years of age and reside in all 50 states of the U.S. With continued support from the National Science Foundation, the LSAY will launch a new cohort of 7th grade students in the fall of 2015. The new cohort (called Cohort 3) will be exactly one generation younger than the students in the 1987 cohorts, allowing a generational comparison of changes in American family life, schooling, and society. The original cohorts were designed to study the factors related to student interest in science and mathematics, the development of skills in those disciplines, the selection of careers, and the development of sufficient scientific literacy to perform citizenship responsibilities in a democratic society. Cohort 3 will explore the same questions over the next two decades. The first 20 years of LSAY data are available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

This project is a partnership between the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) and University of Michigan, with support from the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) to leverage election observer missions and local election results to inform the challenges of building sustainable peace in Africa. It collates results from roughly 300 polling stations in countries where EISA will send election observer missions from late 2018 through the end of 2019. Election observers on the ground will gather information about security arrangements, incidents of political violence, and public infrastructure and services in the areas served by individual polling stations. The information they collect will be geocoded and linked to local election returns. The resulting data sets will allow academics and practitioners to analyze the relationship between elections and violence and to identify local factors – such as public infrastructure and services – that can inform efforts to promote sustainable peace in Africa.

This project examines the political consequences of Hurricane Harvey by studying post-Harvey migration patterns as an event with serious political and economic consequences. This framework examines variations in the decision of displaced individuals to move to different areas and how this affects their associated experience. Researchers also examine how people’s political attitudes change in response to rapid demographic shifts in their communities. Specifically, this study uses publicly available data from Twitter and the Texas voter registration file. The ongoing post-Harvey migration provides a unique opportunity to examine the effect of social contact and political context in a case where these encounters could not have otherwise been anticipated.

This work will build on results on the political attitudes of displaced individuals after Hurricane Katrina. As a result of New Orleans’ unique racial geography, Katrina evacuees were more likely to be people of color and of lower socioeconomic status. The 2017 flooding in the greater Houston area, however, affected both rich and poor communities alike, as well as majority white and majority-minority communities. Examining the impact of these evacuees on the communities to which they relocate allows researchers to separately estimate the effects of evacuee proximity from those of changes in racial demographics.

Founded in 1991, the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy (ICASL) has worked with a wide array of scholars and institutions throughout the world to facilitate and coordinate the measurement and advancement of scientific literacy. The International Center holds the largest single archive of survey data concerning the public understanding of science of any research center in the world. The International Center will continue to: collect national surveys of public understanding of science and technology from countries around the world and to maintain these data in a secure archive; share survey resources with interested scholars for minimal fees to cover actual costs; provide technical assistance to scholars and governments seeking to design and conduct national studies of public understanding of science and technology; host international conferences on selected topics relevant to the study and advancement of scientific literacy; and maintain a Web-based forum for the discussion of issues related to the public understanding of science and technology and the formulation of science and technology policy at the national and international levels.

Election forensics are statistical methods used to determine whether the results of an election accurately reflect citizens’ voting behavior. These methods rely on the analysis of officially reported election results, and are often conducted at the level of polling stations, precincts or ballot boxes and voting machines. Compared to observational methods, election forensics analyses tend to be more comprehensive, and they also produce estimates of fraud that include information about the confidence of conclusions.

The Arab Barometer was established in 2005 by the Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan in close collaboration with institutions and scholars in the Arab world. The project is a multi-country survey project that provides data for theory-driven scholarly inquiry and for dissemination and outreach activities that are useful for political development. Among the many topics covered in the Arab Barometer survey instrument are conceptions of governance and attitudes about democracy; tolerance and respect for diversity; civic engagement and political participation; inter-personal and political trust; attitudes toward status of women and gender equality; religiosity and religious attachments; support for terrorism and radical ideologies, and views of international relations and other countries.

Data from the first five waves of surveys may be found on the project’s website. Arab Barometer surveys have been conducted one or more times in each of the following 15 countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Qatar, and Yemen.