A Public Platform for Open Mixed-Methods Research

The American Voices Project (AVP) is an experimental public-use platform for collecting qualitative data. It was fielded in 2019-2022 as the country’s first nationally-representative, large-scale, multiple-domain qualitative data collection effort. About 250 researchers have used the AVP interview data. Although the current form of the AVP works well for qualitative scholars who read the interview transcripts without a specific research topic in advance, others need a reasonable way to access a subset of transcripts. Currently there is only a codebook for quantitative variables. Sociologists David Grusky, Christopher Bail, Corey Fields, and Kathryn Edin will lead a project to develop a qualitative codebook, dashboard, and other tools to reduce the time required to create a relevant sample when using the AVP.