Survey on American

P ublic culture is defined as the normative context within which public life takes place. This context includes the ideals, beliefs, values, symbols, stories, and public rituals that bind people together and direct them in common action. This common action emanates from public culture, is a reflection of that culture’s ideals, and reinforces its normative boundaries.

The Survey of American Public Culture provides information about America’s public culture that bridges the empirical (number crunching) and theoretical (abstraction) and enables us to address political and cultural changes taking place across America.

Volume One: Life Choices

(fielded in 1990)

The Life Choices survey was designed to draw out the subtle nuances of the broad middle in America—rather than the ideological red/blue divide—on controversial moral and legal issues dividing our nation. We uncovered the fundamental beliefs, convictions, and values that inform American opinions on quality of life by asking questions about illegal immigration, nuclear war, homelessness, suicide, child abuse, drug abuse, environmentalism, animal rights, gender roles, suffering, sexuality, and abortion.

Volume Two: The State of Disunion

(fielded in 1996)

What was the state of the union (or disunion) at the turn of the millenia? For volume two, we interviewed more than 2,000 Americans to produce a summary of popular political perception, opinion, and expectation.

Volume Three: The Politics of Character

(fielded in 2000)

In this third volume, we take up questions surrounding character and its political significance. We consider how issues of morality and character play in the public’s mind, particularly as they pertain to political life. We also attempt to map the moral dispositions and commitments of typical Americans, examine their views of political leadership, and get a sense of their attitudes toward the current state of political life.