Building Infrastructure and Alliances to Meet Common Goals: The Creation of a Canadian Public Opinion Data Index

The University of Connecticut's Canadian Studies, the Roper Center, and the University of Toronto's Robarts Library were awarded a small grant to develop a set of finding aids to unlock the Canadian opinion archives for the purpose of strengthening Canadian Studies Programs in both Canada and the United States. The Canadian Embassy funded the pilot project, the result of which is Canadian iPOLL (CPOLL). This paper discusses the decision-making and collaboration in creating this resource. The design of CPOLL is built upon experiences garnered from two other Roper Center databases: iPOLL (U.S. opinion data) and JPOLL (Japanese opinion data). Collaboration with Canadian data experts assured understanding of cultural nuances, political processes, and the nature of data collection in Canada. The paper addresses efforts to assure consistency in the development of metadata, including coding of topics of coverage, and the decisions involving the selection process, from time period for inclusion to assuring a broad set of sources. Finally, this paper explores the lessons learned from this endeavor and implications for further facilitating cross-national opinion research and creating multiple country databases in the future.