University of Michigan Documents Center

PUBLIC AND LOBBY OPINION ON LEGISLATIVE ISSUES

A Guide for Class Assignments Beginning with 103rd Congress, 1993

Frames Index | Non-Frames Edition

Quick Jumps:

PUBLIC OPINION:
Executive Branch | Hearings | Lobby Groups | Lobby Influence | News Media
Political Parties | President | Public Opinion Polls | States
RELATED INFORMATION:
Citations | Committee Information | Legislative Histories
Member Information PUBLIC POLICY MATRIX

Documents Center

Last updated on August 1, 2000

Congressional Hearings

    • Definition
      • Testimony before a committee in prepared and question/answer format
      • Hearings may be held on proposed legislation, nominations, appropriations, oversight, or investigations
      • People who testify include members of the Executive Branch, lobbyists, experts, and individual citizens

    • Congressional Universe (UMich Only) [Web]
      • Indexes committee publications: hearings (1970+), prints (1993+), and reports (1989+)
      • Published Hearings accessed through Congressional Publications
        • Hearings indexed by subject, keyword, committee, date, and person testifying
        • Advanced Search Strategies option under keyword searching permits numerous proximity indicators
          • w/p (words within paragraph); w/n (words within a number; w/s (words within sentence)
          • Example: china w/10 (world trade organization or most favored nation)
          • Additional protocols at bottom of keyword searching page
        • Record provides summary of testimony, Superintendent of Documents Number for the Documents Center's paper copy, microfiche number for the Documents Center's microfiche, and a link to selected full text testimony since 1988
      • Testimony provides the full text of selected testimony and prepared witness statements
        • Indexed by committee, person testifying, date, and keyword
        • More current than the Published Hearings
        • Published Hearings have much more material
      • See Congressional Universe Research Guide or Congressional Universe Quick Guide for further details

    • Congressional Hearings via GPO Access
      • Selected hearings beginning 1995 also available free to the public via the Government Printing Office
      • Arranged by committee; no index
      • Text and pdf formats

    • Congressional Hearings on the Web
      • Lists government agencies and Congressional committees with selected testimony on the web

    • Internet Search Engines
      • Political Information
        • Search for hearings mounted by government web sites as well as those of individuals and interest groups
        • Sample search: medicare and +testimony and +hearing
      • Google's Uncle Sam
        • Indexes text of government web sites
        • Sample search: medicare and testimony and hearing
        • You will retrieve at least some false drops, including the legislative status on THOMAS and hearings announcements

On-Line Source in Documents Center

    • CQ On Congress (Documents Center Signon)
      • Full text of Transcripts (Q and A) and Testimony (prepared statements) since 1995
      • Coverage is essentially the same as Congressional Universe
      • Indexed by keyword, committee, person testifying, date
      • Results can be saved or sorted by date, committee, or relevancy

Historical Sources


Executive Branch

    • Federal Agency Web Sites
      • Cleancut alphabetical listing of federal agency web sites
      • Includes search engine

    • Google Search Engine
      • Web search engine devoted exclusively to sites with .gov and .mil extensions
      • Excellent for federal policy papers

President

    • Vetoes
      • Bill Vetoes
        • Available via GPO Access beginning 1995
          • Check off the boxes for "House Documents" and use "veto" as a keyword search
        • Also available on THOMAS under Bill Summary and Status, 1973+
          • Arranged by Congress
          • Vetoes searchable as a stage in the legislative process or in a separate list
      • Line Item Vetoes
        • These are officially entitled Presidential Cancellations
        • Available in PDF format from the Clerk of the House

    • Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 1993+
      • Full text of Presidential executive orders, speeches, press conferences, names of nominees
      • Phrases should be in parentheses and Boolean operators capitalized (e.g. "affirmative action" AND "college admissions")
      • Table of contents search (contents AND "july 28, 1997)

    • White House Electronic Publications [Web]
      • Press releases, speeches and documents beginning January 1993 and updated daily
      • Browse by date or broad subject category
      • There is no keyword searching but publications can be identified using a forms interface specifying date, broad subject, type of publication, and principal speaker
      • Searching by keyword and date

    • President (UMich)
      • Annotated links to Presidential speeches, biographies, directives, and executive orders

Lobby Group Influence

    • Background Information [Web and Library]
      • Use to identify politics of legislation in the headlines
    • Bills [Web]
      • Which Members of Congress have introduced bills promoted by lobby groups
    • Campaign Finances [Web and Library]
      • Campaign contributions of lobby groups to Members of Congress
      • Note whether Member is on a committee which has jurisdiction over a subject of interest to the lobby group
    • Congressional Hearings [Library]
      • Testimony of lobby groups
    • Floor Votes
      • Which Members of Congress have voted in the best interests of a particular lobby group?
    • Lobby Group Ratings (UMich) [Web and Library]
      • Annotated list of web sites and printed sources
    • Lobby Group Web Sites
      • Opinions and sometimes testimony are included on lobby group web sites

Lobby Group Opinion

Newspaper Articles

Political Parties


Public Opinion Polls

    • Search MIRLYN [Web and Library]
      • Use subject heading "Public Opinion Polls"
    • AllPolitics (Time/CNN)
      • Excellent coverage of elections and public opinion polls
      • Use search engine and type "poll"
      • Separate archive for 1996 Election Polls
    • American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy
      • Special survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations
      • Charts and graphs on public opinion on national priorities, U.S. role in resolving world problems, major foreign affairs issues
      • Adobe Acrobat only

    • American Public Opinion Index
      • Most comprehensive source for public opinion polls
      • Ref. Room HM 261 .A4631
      • Corresponding microfiche in Serials/Microforms as MICRO-F X423

    • Gallup Organization
      • Summary results of most current public opinion polls
      • Gallup Poll, 1935 to present, also available in the Graduate Library Reference Room as HN 90.P9 .G18

    • General Social Survey (ICPSR, NORC, UC-Berkeley)
      • Annual survey since 1972 of public opinion and lifestyle
      • Covers poverty, religion, contraceptive use, opinion on foreign affairs
      • ICPSR site provides background on survey as well as printed publications resulting from the survey
      • Primary data extraction available from ICPSR and UC-Berkeley LI>Computer-Assisted Survey (UC-Berkeley)
        • Data may be manipulated on-line
        • Quick start instructions for the initiate:
          • Choose Demonstration Survey Data Archive
          • Choose the survey you would like and the "browse" option; start
          • Choose "Alphabetical Variable List"
          • Choose your variables and write down their corresponding code names
          • Go back to the original screen and choose "run crosstabulations;" start
          • Imagine the output as a spreadsheet and type in the desired vertical and horizontal code names; also choose output as statistics or percentages
        • Example of General Social Survey
          • Percentage of Protestants who strongly agree with death penalty
          • In "run crosstabulations," type in "deathpen" as vertical and "relig" as horizontal; check off percentaging as vertical; run the table
          • Example of American National Election Studies

    • Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
      • Non-profit organization providing public policy information on issues affecting black Americans
      • Summaries of selected papers include public opinion polls on such topics as race relations, children, black participation in the Republican Party
      • Full text of annual report

    • Kaiser Family Foundation Surveys
      • Surveys on American values, sex, health care issues, politics, and morals
      • Full text since 1996
      • Most in pdf format

    • Louis Harris Associates
      • Public opinion results of last two months
      • Primarily government and economic questions

    • National Council on Public Opinion Polls
      • Principles of disclosure
      • 20 questions journalists should ask when reading poll results

    • National Opinion Research Center (U-Chicago)
      • Home of the General Social Survey with links to data at ICPSR
      • Studies describes its economic, education, social, and health statistics programs
      • Studies and data on a variety of topics (guns, stress, abortion, smoking) appear in the Library section of the menu

    • Pew Research Center
      • Text and statistics of U.S. public opinion polls on politics, public policy, and the press
      • Issues covered since 1995 include the Presidential elections, TV news viewership, Medicare reforms, campaign financing, churches, and the death of Princess Diana
      • Data on the public's attention to major news stories beginning 1986
      • Archive of files since 1985 available upon request

    • Polling Report
      • Biweekly periodical with public opinion polls on politics, business, and culture
      • Examples include favorite actor of all time, the President's approval rating
      • Includes articles on public opinion trends by opinion analysts, pollsters and academics

    • Portrait of America (Rasmussen Associates)
      • National surveys on politics, home, lifestyle, sports and business
      • Includes data, questionnaires, and articles since February 1997
      • Searchable by date, broad heading, and keyword

    • Public Agenda
      • Nonpartisan, issue-oriented think tank
      • Presents eighteen issues, including abortion, crime, gambling, immigration, internet privacy, social security, and welfare
      • For each issue provides background, links to lobby groups, a digest of news stories, basic statistics, and a variety of state laws
      • Numerous public opinion polls

    • Public Opinion Poll Question Database (University of North Carolina)
      • Data base of questions asked in the Harris, Carolina, Southern States, and All State polls since the 1960s
      • Searchable by subject, poll, and decade
      • Catalog provides additional information and often frequency distributions

    • Public Opinion Quarterly (UMich Only)
      • Full text of scholarly journal analyzing public opinion worldwide
      • Searchable by keyword, author, journal, date
      • Part of JSTOR project
      • Public Opinion Quarterly Index is a free index, 1937+
      • Full text also in Graduate Library as HM 261 .A1 P98 with a backup on microfilm as FILM X375

    • Pulse (Epinet)
      • Bimonthy web magazine focusing on one issue
      • Provides context to the public opinion polls and links to in-depth articles
      • As of May 1999, one issue devoted to Social Security

    • Roper Center/Public Opinion
      • Primarily information about the Center
      • Searchable catalogs of its public opinion polls, the Latin American Survey Data Bank and the Japanese Survey Data Bank
      • Roper polls can also be searched in Academic Universe (UMich Only) in the Reference/Polls and Surveys section

    • Washington Post
      • Public opinion polls on public affairs since January 1997
      • Subjects include Presidential popularity, sanctions toward Iraq, violence in schools
      • Descriptions supplemented by statistical tables

State and Local Governments (UMich)

    • Links to national associations
    • National Conference of State Legislatures addresses federal-state policy issues
    • National Governors Association has extensive list of policy statements
    • Links to gubernatorial and legislative web sites in all states

Citation Guides [Web and Library]

    • Citing government documents
    • Citing electronic information

Political Process

    • Legislation is a highly political process, despite this logical outline
    • Public Policy Matrix is a chart summarizing the legislative process and sources for political information about the process

Navigation Map



Grace York, Coordinator, Documents Center
The University of Michigan Library
Send comments and suggestions to govdocs@umich.edu

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/opinion.html

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