The American Soldier Surveys

During WWII, the Army conducted hundreds of surveys of American troops, covering topics relating to soldiers' attitudes toward the war, morale, and education. The collective survey results affected many aspects of federal policy in the post-war years, from promotion of the GI bill extending educational benefits to veterans, to desegregation of the military. The American Soldier Surveys presented here is a partial collection of these opinion surveys.

• What surveys are included in the Geostat collection?
  The Geostat collection contains 137 surveys covering 78 different studies. Most deal with morale at some level. They cover specific topics ranging from attitudes of and about blacks and women in the service, satisfaction with their preparation for and duties in the war, postwar job plans, and attitudes toward their officers (or enlisted men). Many studies were conducted in several different locations or for several different troop units.



• View survey descriptions



• What types of files are available?
  For each survey, a text documentation file and an SPSS data file are available. The documentation files contain the original survey questions, data codes, and frequencies of response. The data files contain the responses to the questions in rectangular format (one record for each response).



• Using the American Soldier Surveys codebooks



• Where did the data come from?
  The surveys were conducted by the Army Research Branch of the Army Services Forces between 1942 and 1945. Samuel Stouffer, one of the principal scientists employed by the ARB, made copies of the survey data for 138 unclassified surveys (stored on punch cards) when he left to take a position at Harvard University. After Stouffer's death, the collection was transferred to the Roper Center, where the punch cards were eventually read onto computer tape and electronic documentation and frequencies were produced. In this form, a copy of the collection was accessioned to the U.S. National Archives. The Geostat Center obtained the data from NARA, and prepared the SPSS data files available here.
  
  
  • More information from the National Archives