Michigan Public Policy Survey Public Use Datasets

The Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS) is a program of state-wide surveys of local
government leaders in Michigan. The MPPS is designed to fill an important
information gap in the policymaking process. While there are ongoing surveys of
the business community and of the citizens of Michigan, before the MPPS there
were no ongoing surveys of local government officials that were representative
of all general purpose local governments in the state. Therefore, while we knew
the policy priorities and views of the state's businesses and citizens, we knew
very little about the views of the local officials who are so important to the
economies and community life throughout Michigan.<br>
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The MPPS was launched in 2009 by the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) at the University of Michigan and is
conducted in partnership with the Michigan Association of Counties, Michigan
Municipal League, and Michigan Townships Association. The associations provide
CLOSUP with contact information for the survey's respondents, and consult on
survey topics. CLOSUP makes all decisions on survey design, data analysis, and
reporting, and receives no funding support from the associations.<br>
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The surveys investigate local officials' opinions
and perspectives on a variety of important public policy issues and solicit
factual information about their localities relevant to policymaking. Over time,
the program has covered issues such as fiscal, budgetary and operational
policy, fiscal health, public sector compensation, workforce development,
local-state governmental relations, intergovernmental collaboration, economic
development strategies and initiatives such as placemaking and economic
gardening, the role of local government in environmental sustainability, energy
topics such as hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") and wind power,
trust in government, views on state policymaker performance, opinions on the
impacts of the Federal Stimulus Program (ARRA), and more. The program will
investigate many other issues relevant to local and state policy in the
future. A searchable
database of every question the MPPS has asked is
available on CLOSUP's website. Results of MPPS surveys are currently available as reports,
and via online
data tables.<br>
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Out of a commitment to promoting public knowledge of Michigan local governance,
the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy is releasing public use datasets.
In order to protect respondent confidentiality, CLOSUP has divided the data
collected in each wave of the survey into separate datasets focused on
different topics that were covered in the survey. Each dataset contains only
variables relevant to that subject, and the datasets cannot be linked together.
Variables have also been omitted or recoded to further protect
respondent confidentiality. For researchers looking for a more extensive
release of the MPPS data, restricted datasets are available through
openICPSR's Virtual Data Enclave.<br>
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Please note: additional waves of MPPS public use datasets are being prepared,
and will be available as part of this project as soon as they are completed.
For information on accessing MPPS public use and restricted datasets, please
visit the MPPS data access page: http://closup.umich.edu/mpps-download-datasets<br>