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W
elcome to th
e U.S. Officials' Job Approval Ratings (JARs) website, a unique depository for job approval ratings obtained at
the state level for state Governors, U.S. Senators and U.S. Presidents
from the mid-1900s to today (short a few months for us to compile the data). Funded in part by a National Science
Foundation grant, the research project is administered by
Richard Niemi
of the University of Rochester in partnership with
Thad Beyle
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
and Lee
Sigelman
at George Washington University. While the
project is currently ongoing, the data available today represent a substantial
portion of surveys conducted during the last 40 to 50 years on a multitude
of questions pertaining to satisfaction of the American electorate with
their political representatives. As new data become available,
we will post updates to this site…so stay tuned.
Prior to downloading data, please take a few moments to read our remarks
on question type and rating scales
, downloading job approval
ratings
, and treatment of missing
or incomplete data
in order to ensure
that you are able to take full advantage of the information provided.
Databases, Updates and Codebook:
State Governors 1958-2005 Database (Excel format) (updated 6/18/08)
Note: State Governors includes California
Governor Davis recall support poll results.
U.S. Senators 1978-2005 Database (Excel format) (updated 6/18/08)
U.S. Presidents 1945-2005 Database (Excel format) (updated 6/18/08)
Codebook on Web (updated 06/16/04)
Codebook in Microsoft Word format (updated 6/18/08)
University of Rochester, Department of Political Science
George Washington University, Department of Political Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Political
Science
Site maintained by:
Patrick Wohlfarth,
pcwohlf@email.unc.edu
For more information, please contact
Prof. Thad Beyle at beyle@email.unc.edu.
Graphics courtesy of
www.worldatlas.com
Last updated January 2008.
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Question Type and Rating Scales
As you will find in the codebook, the
survey results represent a variety of questions asked of respondents
regarding their assessments of officials. With the exception of
the Senator data, for which question type was limited to one, questions
varied from general job performance assessments to assessments of the
official's attention to one or more key policy areas. For this reason,
two or more records may be identical except for the question type codes.
In addition, rating scales vary. Possible responses will range
from "good, very good, fair, poor" to "approve, disapprove," and so forth.
To make aggregation of the results possible, all responses have been collapsed
into "percent positive" and "percent negative." A "/" indicates
the division for positive and negative totals. Listings for these
and remaining fields are provided in the codebook.
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Downloading Job Approval Ratings
Before downloading JARs on this site,
please note the following. Databases have been composed in Microsoft
Excel, versions 97 forward, and are transferable into statistical
applications such as SPSS, STATA, and SAS. For ease of data manipulation,
codes for all three primary databases are consistent with each other--hence,
a single codebook for gubernatorial, senatorial and presidential data.
Upon opening the Excel files, you may encounter ##### in one or more
of the spreadsheet cells. If this occurs, it normally means that
the column width is not great enough to show the full cell entry.
To widen the column, place your cursor at the top of the column, left click,
and "drag" the edge of the column to the appropriate width. For more
help with Excel, please refer to the Help window in the Excel software
application.
In addition, please
note that the "date into field" (DATEIN) column in all datasets is
accompanied by 3 separate columns for day (DAYIN), month (MONTHIN),
and year (YEARIN); this is true likewise for the "date out of field"
(DATEOUT) columns. Some statistical applications "prefer" the
3-column split over the full date style (i.e. 03/34/79). Please
be sure to check for proper translation of dates when you open the
datasets in the statistical application you choose.
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Treatment of Missing or Incomplete Data
As we continue to improve this resource,
our goal is to keep missing data to a minimum. However, in some
cases full information pertaining to a given survey is not available.
Where information is lacking in a record, the cell will be empty.
This should translate appropriately into the statistical application.
Please also note that for some records the exact date of the survey in
question is incomplete. Where this occurs, the expansion of the
date code into three separate variables for day, month, and year operates
as follows:
Information available (example)
Recorded as
Year (1983) and Month (April)
4 1983
Year (1983)
1983
I.e., when there is just a month and year, it records
the date as the first of the relevant month and year. Note that
the original variable--DATEIN--does not change; it remains a month
and year or just a year. When using the data, please note that
column-scale changes in the format of the dates will compromise the
integrity of the data due to automatic adjustments made by the Excel software
to compensate for "missing" information. For example, where the
date is given as Mar-79, a format change for the entire column could
result in the date "permanently" reading as 03/01/79, thereby losing
the original information noting that the exact date of the survey is
not known. It is recommended that any changes to the format of
dates be made per cell(s) in order to avoid making unwanted changes.
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