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 primarily into three categories:

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.
   
   
3. Open-Ended Text files contain the text of respondent answers to open-ended questions. ANES personnel review all open-ended text files and remove information of particular risk to respondent confidentiality. Investigators request open-ended text so that they may code the responses in a way that is meaningful to their particular analysis. Open-ended text can be coded in many different ways. For example, one researcher might want to know how many unique issues the respondent mentioned in his/her response, while other researchers may want to code how strongly the respondent seemed to feel about a specific topic.

   Open-ended text data are provided to the Investigator with a scrambled identification variable that can not be linked to ANES public release files. After the Investigator codes the open-ended text, he or she must return the file to ANES. ANES does a review to make sure the codes are not a risk to respondent confidentiality. ANES then creates a new dataset with just the codes (no open-ended text) and an unscrambled identification variable that allows the file to be merged with ANES public release files. The new file, which does not pose a risk to respondent confidentiality, is then made available for download from the ANES website, where the Investigator and all other interested researchers can access it.

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.