Uncovering Historical British Survey Data Through File Format Migration

The Social and Political Change in Britain (1945-1991) project is an ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) funded collaboration between the University of Southampton and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. As a result of this collaboration, over 700 British public opinion polls from 1945 to 1991 have been converted from column binary to modern data formats and made available through the Roper Center archive. Additionally, questions from these converted datasets were used to generate over 40 trends covering topics such as the economy, attitudes regarding social issues, elections and approvals, and party perceptions (https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/esrc-project). This presentation will provide an overview of the project and details on its components, including digitization of paper documentation, selection of surveys for conversion, column binary conversion training, file creation and transfer, quality assurance, and data visualization.