Time Series Codebook Search Help

The ANES Time Series Codebook Search utility searches existing codebooks from studies in the ANES Time Series. (A list of Time Series Studies is available from the ANES Data Center).

In a study codebook, a codebook record is the documentation for a specific variable. This utility allows you to search full codebook records or the question text associated with the variable. Text matches are character-string based rather than 'word' based. For instance, if you search for "congress," matches will be made with both "congress" and "congressional." Because many older codebooks are currently in an all-CAPS format, matches are not case-sensitive. Wild cards and regular expressions are not accommodated.

The success of matches will be limited by how thorough the codebook documentation. For example, searching for "thermometer" may not match every thermometer variable, especially if you choose to only search among question texts. This is because thermometers typically appear in a series, and question wording after the first thermometer usually excludes the word "thermometer" itself (wording is typically more like "How would you rate XXXX?"). Even if you search full codebook texts rather than question texts only, in those cases where the remainder of the codebook record (apart from the question text) also does not include the word "thermometer," then no match will be made.

In addition, some searches will be less than comprehensive because keywords are not yet present. For example, searching for "President" will miss some questions about the President in office at the time of the study because some codebook records may only reference the actual name, rather then identifying the person as the (current) President.

The addition of keywords and other improvements to the Time Series codebooks will enhance search capabilities, but these will be determined by the availability of future funding resources.

Note about constructing search conditions:

A maximum of two search conditions are allowable. If two search conditions are used, they must be linked by a choice among:

And
Or
And Not
Or Not

The second search condition, however, cannot be used if the first search condition has not used both its texts fields (that is, the first search condition must have specified two matches).

A search condition can specify one or two matches, using its two text fields. If a search condition includes two matches, then the relationship between its own two matches must be specified among:

And / Or / And Not / Or Not

Grouping and priority of matches follow mathematical patterns as follows: