National Cross-Section (ncs98.sav). This datafile consists of 150 different political, economic, demographic, and development indicators for a cross-section of 187 countries in 1998 (or thereabouts). Most data are from the World Bank's World Development Indicators, but the datafile also includes some Human Development Indicators from the UN Development Programme. The variables in this and all other class datasets include labels so they can be quickly identified while working in SPSS, but more detailed descriptions of these data are also available.
American Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy (apo94.sav). These data are taken from surveys conducted by the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations in 1994. That study of American attitudes (ICPSR Study 6561) consists of data drawn from a census of elite "opinion leaders" as well as a sample of the general public. The variables extracted for the class dataset represent responses to a variety of questions about foreign affairs and American foreign policy during the Clinton administration, plus select demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents. The variables in the dataset are fairly well labeled, but consult the codebook for exact question wording.
General Social Survey (gss7898.sav). These data come from five surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, and 1998). For each year, there are 500 cases and a large number of variables representing responses to a broad range of questions about social, political, religious, and other matters, as well as demographic and socioeconomic charactersitics of the respondents. The variables have labels; consult the codebook (e.g., the mnemonic index) for a more detailed description of the survey.
Middle East Conflict and Cooperation (mets7999.sav). This dataset consists of monthly measures of the level of conflict and cooperation between pairs of countries in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, covering the period from April 1979 to September 1999. The measures are constructed from over 150,000 interstate interactions reported by the Reuters news service, "machine-coded" by the Kansas Events Data System (KEDS), and representing the state of the art in events data collection. Aggregates are generated by scaling each event (diplomatic protests, displays of force, trade agreements, cultural exchanges, etc.) according to their level of conflict or cooperation, and summing these over the course of the month. Click here for a listing of event types and the scale used to construct the monthly time series.