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Home Datasets Budget Cong. Quarterly Almanac Congressional Hearings Executive Orders New York Times Stories Most Important Problem U.S. Public Laws State of the Union Supreme Court Roll Call Votes Agendas Update

Datasets

Below are links to download the data sets. You can download each data set as an Excel file or as a Tab-delimited text file. Codebooks related to each dataset are also available in the table below. Some of the codebooks are available as PDF files. To read these files you will need Acrobat Reader. A free version of Acrobat Reader is available in the button below.
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To download the Tab-delimited text files, right-click the link and select "Save Link As..." from the appearing menu. Left-clicking the text file links will open them in the browser window. If this happens, go to the "File" menu in your browser and select "Save Page As." In both cases, make sure that in the Save File Dialogue box, the "Save As Type" box says "Text Document."
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Tip: Move your mouse over the data set headings for more information about each dataset. (For IE 6+ users, if you click the headings, the descriptions will stay until you click another heading.)

Budget (UPDATED 8/15//07) :OMB FY 1947-2006
This data set provides annual data, adjusted for inflation, of U.S. Budget Authority from FY1947 through FY2006. Using Office of Management and Budget Functions and Subfunctions, we have revised the data to be consistent over time.
Codebook [ms word - 303 kb] [pdf - 383 kb]
Current Year Dollars & FY 2006 Dollars [Excel - 671 kb] N/A
Current Year Dollars N/A [Text - 83 kb]
FY 2006 Dollars N/A [Text - 44 kb]
Congressional Quarterly Almanac :CQ Almanac 1948-2003
This data set contains information from all articles in the main chapters of the CQ Almanac (1948 to 2002) (13,715) records). CQ Almanac articles typically cover one legislative initiative. When a CQ article contains information about several different public laws or bills, it is divided so that each record in our data set contains information about one legislative initiative. We code each record by our system of policy content codes. Several other variables concerning each legislative initiative (e.g., bill numbers, Public Law Number, if applicable, committees involved, primary sponsors, etc.) are also available. Identification variables link our records to the original CQ source material as well as to our Public Laws Data Set. A note of caution, article length has varied over the span of this dataset. Users should weight accordingly.
Codebook [web page]
CQ Data [Tab Delimited Text]
Congressional Hearings (UPDATED 6/8/07):CIS Abstracts 1946-2005
This data set contains information summarizing each U.S. Congressional hearing from 1947 to 2005 (83,337 hearings). Using the Congressional Information Service (CIS) Abstracts, we code each hearing by our system of policy content codes. The system includes 19 major topics and over 200 subtopics. Other variables, including committee and subcommittee, are also available. Identification variables link our records to the original CIS source material. Note: Research making use of the congressional hearings dataset should bear in mind that the hearings for the last year available on our website are incomplete. This is due to the CIS archival system.
Codebook [web page]
All Hearings Data [Tab Delimited Text - 14.5mb]
House Hearings Data [Tab Delimited Text - 8.3mb]
Senate Hearings Data [Tab Delimited Text - 5.9mb]
Joint Hearings Data [Tab Delimited Text - 368kb]
Executive Orders:
The Executive Orders data set contains information about each executive order issued from 1945 to 2003 (3800 records). Each record is coded by our system of policy content categories and other variables. Other variables of interests included are the party of the president, whether the order was issued during a time of divided government, and whether the order was issued at the beginning or end of a presidential term. (UPDATED 1/5/06)
Codebook [ms word - 26 kb]
Executive Orders Data [Tab Delimited Text - 752kb]
New York Times Index (UPDATED 3/12/08): New York Times Index 1946-2004
This data set is a systematic random sample of the New York Times Index from 1946 to 2004 (~44,246 records). The sample is the first entry on every odd-numbered page of the Index. Each entry is coded by the major topics from our system of policy content codes. Other variables include the length, date, and location of the story, whether it addressed government actions, etc.
Codebook [web page]
New York Times Index Data [Tab Delimited Text - 5.8mb]
Gallup's Most Important Problem (Updated 8/14/06): Gallup Public Opinion Polls, Most Important Problem Question, 1947-2004
This data set contains the responses to Gallup's Most Important Problem facing the nation question from 1947 to 2004 (1102 records). For each poll taken the responses are coded by issue area. This worksheet captures the aggregated proportions for each major category, on an annual basis, for all of the polls contained in the working data set. The annual relative rankings of each issue area are also provided in the data set.
Codebook [ms word - 3 mb]
MIP Annual Data [Tab Delimited Text - 64kb]
MIP Quarterly Data [Tab Delimited Text - 21kb]
Public Laws (UPDATED 11/20/07): U.S. Public Laws 1948-2004
This data set contains information about each public law passed from 1948 to 2004 (18,476 records). Each record is coded by our system of policy content categories and other variables. Identification variables allow linkage to the CQ Almanac data set. NEW: Dataset now dynamically links users to the full text (104th to 108th) and bill summary (93rd to 108th) information on THOMAS and other public domain websites.

Most Important Laws 1948-1998
This data set identifies 576 of the most important laws over the period 1948 through 1998. The identification of the most important laws is based on CQ lines of coverage (with adjustments made based on CQ under coverage between 1948 and 1961).
Codebook [web page]
Public Laws Data [Tab Delimited Text - 3.3mb]
Most Important Laws 1948-1998 [Excel - 145 kb] [Text - 72 kb]
State of the Union Speeches: State of the Union Speeches 1946 - 2005
This dataset (18,853 records) contains information on each quasi-statement in the Presidential State of the Union Speeches since 1946. Each record is coded by our system of policy content categories and other variables. Users can dynamically link to full text versions of the speech for further analysis.
Codebook [ms word 27.5 kb]
State of the Union Data [Excel - 6mb]
Supreme Court Cases: The Supreme Court dataset (7,103 records) spans from 1953 - 1998 and is one of the most comprehensive looks at the Court from a policy perspective. A codebook accompanies the dataset which, in addition to basic data issues, gives users an introduction to the court's terminology and procedures.
Codebook [webpage]
Supreme Court Data [Excel - 18mb]
Congressional Roll Call Votes: The Congressional Roll Call Voting Dataset codes every congressional roll call vote from 1946 to 2000 using the Policy Agendas Project common topic coding system. The dataset currently contains 36,861 records, with 19,009 votes in the House and 17,852 votes in the Senate.
Codebook [MS Word 42 kb]
House Records [Excel - 8.4mb]
Senate Records [Excel - 7.4mb]
Counts and Proportions by Major Topic [Excel - 0.2mb]

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