CCES 2011 Survey

Information about the 2011 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (hereafter “CCES”):

  1. Description:  Part of the funding for QIPSR provides for three years participation in the CCES, a national survey of political attitudes conducted in October and November of each year.  Beginning in 2006, researchers at thirty universities pooled their resources to create a very large sample national survey.  Kentucky’s portion of the national survey consists of 1,000 respondents who will answer approximately 10 minutes of questions that 4-5 “teams” of Kentucky researchers will write. 
  2. Timetable:  The deadline for submitting final questions to CCES is June 15 (July 1?), which means the questions must be submitted to the QIPSR review panel no later than June 1st (June 15th?), so that we can decide which “teams’” questions will be included and provide suggestions for modifications.    A pre-test goes into the field by mid-August.  Actual interviewing begins in October, and the data is delivered by the end of January. 
  3. Requirements
    1. Graduate students must work with a faculty advisor.
    2. No more than four to five teams will be selected. Preference will be given to teams whose questions overlap with other teams, have a political focus, and are deemed theoretically and politically important. 
    3. To pre-test your questions, consider using  Mechanical Turk as a very cheap pre-test instrument ($.50 per respondent for a limited number of questions, with all financing handled by Amazon.com).   See the article by Berinsky, et al. If your items aren’t selected to be included on the CCES, you can also field your questions on Mechanical Turk.   
    4. See the Common Content questions that have been asked on the 2010 survey, from which approximately 85% of the 2011 respondents will be chosen.  Make sure your questions do not replicate those or the Common Content questions for the 2011 survey, which will be posted here when they are made available in June or July.
  4. Consult the following reference documents linked below for more information:
    1. CCES Common Content 2010 CC July 9 2010.doc
    2. See the document, "How to Format your Questionnaire for CCES, for guidelines on how to format your question and how it should look when submitting it to the Advisory Board.  See the end of this document for a point system that can be used as a rough guideline for estimating the length of the interview without a questionnaire in hand.   
    3. Berinsky et al article on Mechanical Turk. 

  • Berinsky, Huber, and Lenz (2010) paper, "Using Mechanical Turk as a Subject Recruitment Tool for Experimental Research," linked here.
  • "How to Format your Questionnaire for CCES" (from YouGovPolimetrix) linked here.
  • CCES 2010 Common Content Planning Document linked here.