Data and materials from the American National Election Studies (ANES) that have been identified as being of potential risk to respondent confidentiality are not publicly released. Access to Restricted Data can be requested only through a strict application process (click here for more information), and only for the purpose of scientific and public policy research. Particularly sensitive data - such as names and street addresses - will never be made available.

Many Restricted Data files have been pre-prepared by ANES personnel. These files fall into two categories including:

1. Detailed Geography files contain more geographical detail than is otherwise publicly available. The information is typically used by researchers to add contextual data to examine how respondents are influenced by the area around them. Examples of geographic contextual data that a researcher might be interested in merging with ANES public release files are "percent registered voters, by county" and "average house value, by zip code".
   
   
2. Detailed Occupation and Industry files contain a more specific description of the occupation and industry of each respondent. For instance, although our public files group occupations into twenty or fewer categories, the Restricted Data files include hundreds of more specific occupation categories. A researcher might ask for these Restricted Data to group the occupations in a different way than we do in our public files.
   
   

Please contact the ANES staff to determine whether the data in which you are interested are available.

Data and materials that are not pre-prepared may require special processing by ANES personnel. ANES may assess a charge for the actual costs involved in preparing the requested Restricted Data pursuant to an approved application.

Questions?

Please contact us by email to "anes@electionstudies.org" with any questions you might have.