Unfavorable Views of China Report, U.S. Election Polling Places Dataset, Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior, Nobel Prize open data, the state of happiness in a COVID world, and Global Individual Food Consumption Database
1. Unfavorable Views of China Reach Historic Highs in Many Countries
Source: Pew Research Center
On October 6, the Pew Research Center released a report, suggesting that negative views of China have grown to historic highs across many advanced economies. Pew has been tracking attitudes and opinions of China in more than a dozen developed countries since 2002, using a combination of telephone and face-to-face interviews. Because of the pandemic this year, Pew conducted all surveys through telephone interviews.
Pew found that unfavorable opinions of China soared over the past year. More than 70% of the respondents surveyed in the 14 countries hold a negative view of China. Pew provides the dataset and report in PDF format.
2. U.S. Election Polling Places Dataset (2012–2018)
Source: The Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the betrayals of public trust. The organization has published the U.S. Election Polling Place Dataset, which includes the locations of polling places from 2012 to 2018. The dataset aims at aiding reporting and research on the impact that polling place closures and changes could have on the 2020 election.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic this year, many voters may not be able to cast their ballots in person at a polling station, adding uncertainties to this year’s U.S. presidential election. This investigative project is, therefore, of particular relevance. The organization’s website provides data in CSV format and packages them by state.
3. The ANES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior
Source: American National Election Studies
The guide provides immediate access to tables and graphs that display the ebb and flow of public opinion, electoral behavior and choice in American politics over time. The dataset includes voters’ social and religious characteristics and their evaluations of political parties and candidates.
The guide is produced from data in the ANES Cumulative Data File. If users need machine-readable data, they need to register and subscribe to ANES. The National Center for Election Studies is a joint research project of Stanford University and the University of Michigan, funded by the National Science Foundation.
4. The Nobel Prize open data
Source: Nobel
The 2020 Nobel Prize announcements were made between October 5 and 12. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences provides API portals to the public, enabling users to filter, rank and export data by year, laureates and prizes. “Linked Data” provides even more possibilities to explore the data, such as indexing the award and lecture videos of particular winners as well as lecture PPTs and text.
5. The state of happiness in a COVID world
Source: Ipsos
Among 29 potential sources of happiness measured, people across the world are most likely to derive “the greatest happiness” from: health/physical well-being, relationship with a partner/spouse, and children, according to the latest Ipsos annual survey on global happiness released on October 7. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of pleasure at an aggregate level is nearly unchanged from last year. However, year-over-year, the incidence of happiness shows significant shifts in many countries: it has declined by eight percentage points or more in Peru, Chile, Mexico, India, the United States, Australia, Canada and Spain, while it has increased by more than eight percentage points in China, Russia, Malaysia and Argentina. China is the happiest of all the countries surveyed, with 93% of respondents saying they feel happy during the pandemic. Ipsos provides the report in PDF format.
6. Global individual food consumption data
Source: FAO/WHO
In some countries and regions, economic, social, cultural and behavioral factors influence household members’ food distribution. However, many decision-makers still rely on data at the national level (i.e. food availability data) or household level (i.e. household survey data) to measure the nutritional adequacy of diet of different population groups.
In the advent of the World Food Day (October 16), I would like to draw your attention to the Global Individual Food Consumption Database (GIFCD), which aims to improve the ability of policymakers to monitor food consumption by collating data on individual food consumption across countries and at all levels. The website provides an interactive interface to facilitate data search and retrieval.
