Cooperative Survey Research

The rise of the Internet has radically altered survey research by changing how we think about sampling, driving down the cost of interviewing, and creating new ways of asking questions. This technology has also opened the way to a new style of cooperatively organized survey research. Projects such as the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) and the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP) involve collaborations of dozens of research teams that can collect very large samples and many smaller surveys tailored to the research questions of particular teams. This review examines the organization and key findings of these projects as well as their sampling methodology and its validity. Of particular importance, this article offers a direct comparison of the CCES with actual election results and the American National Election Studies (ANES), showing that the new survey approach yields highly accurate results that replicate the correlation structure of the ANES.