ANES Announcement: ANES 2020 Time Series study Full Release and additional products now available
Dear American National Election Studies (ANES) User Community:
We are pleased to announce the availability of several products from the ANES 2020 Time Series study. All of the products can be downloaded from the 2020 ANES Time Series page on the ANES website in the Data Center.
1. Full Release.
This is a full release of the ANES 2020 Time Series study dataset and the third release overall. It contains both the pre-election and post-election study. The previous two releases were preliminary and did not contain some of the variables, processing, cleaning, and documentation that are a part of this current release. In particular, this release includes the following additions or changes to the data file: updated weights, additional variables (state, district, group consciousness, group identity, screener information, candidate name/gender/party, randomizations, interviewer observations, interviewer characteristics, etc.), additional and updated summary variables (including vote summaries), coding of Other Specify responses, data corrections, improved documentation and metadata, and removal of four post-election cases. As a result of these and other updates, users are recommended to check their preliminary release results against this current release, to assess whether the changes have any effect on their analyses.
2. Updated Questionnaire.
The pre-election and post-election questionnaires have been merged into a single questionnaire document. The questionnaire newly includes question logic, randomizations, display specifications, mode differences, and corresponding variables from the ANES 2020 Time Series study Full Release dataset. An additional questionnaire file including instrument specifications for the screener has also been uploaded.
3. Redacted Open-Ends.
The previous redacted open-ends dataset included answers to questions about timing of the vote decision and likes-dislikes. The new file has been updated to also include questions concerning office recall (political knowledge) and most important problem. An additional set of remaining redacted variables will be made available within a month after this email.
4. Methodology File.
This dataset provides users with supplemental methodological variables from the ANES 2020 Time Series study on all sampled addresses, including disposition data, sample frame data, incentive escalation data, survey paradata, data from interviews in the video interview condition, record of contact with all addresses, data from the video refusal conversion team, case validation efforts, inter-rater reliability data, and Census data.
5. Question-Level Timings.
We produced these datasets, one for the pre-election study and one for the post-election study, by parsing audit trail files from the data collections. Each row represents a survey interview, and each column refers to a survey question. Each timing is the difference between the timestamp of opening a survey question and the timestamp once closing the question. Analysts should be aware that occasionally, due to technical issues beyond our control, the timing for certain cells and records was not recorded and is missing even if the questions were asked of the respondent.
6. Restricted-Use Data.
This week, we will be depositing with ICPSR a number of restricted datasets from the ANES 2020 Time Series study. When the datasets are available to be applied for from ICPSR they will appear in the ICPSR catalog and also be listed on the Restricted-Use Data Access page accessible from the Data Center. We anticipate that you will be able to submit applications to ICPSR for access to the datasets within a couple of weeks after we deposit the files.
Thank you for your use of and support for the ANES!
Best regards,
The ANES Project