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.

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.

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.

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 will be available through openICPSR's Virtual Data Enclave.

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.