UC DATA Archive and Technical Assistance

The Field Poll, established in 1947 as The California Poll by Mervin Field, has operated continuously as an independent, non-partisan, media-sponsored public opinion news service.

Each year the Field Polls cover a wide range of political and social topics examining California public opinion. Continuing measures are made of voter support for leading political figures vying for major state and federal offices, job ratings of important political figures and reactions to significant political events. Voter awareness, understanding and predispositions of major campaign issues and salient statewide ballot propositions are also tracked over time.

UC DATA, a member of The Field Institute Academic Consortium, serves as the distributor of data from the Field Polls. Data are made available to members of the University of California (UC) and the California State University (CSU) systems in accordance with a licensing agreement. UC membership in the Consortium is funded by the UC Office of the President. CSU Consortium membership is funded by the Social Science Research and Instructional Council (SSRIC).

Online access to the Field Polls is provided using SDA, a set of programs for the documentation and Web-based analysis of survey data that was developed and maintained by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) at UC Berkeley. The formatting of data and documentation for use with SDA was a cooperative endeavour of UC DATA, the ISSR Data Archives at UCLA, and the SSRIC.