Search results

This study examined how U.S. political leaders publicly framed disability during calendar year 2025, using a systematic discourse analysis of public statements and federal legislation. It also examined how this discourse was reflected in federal education policy, including statements by the Secretary of Education and education-related bills.

The study analyzed 121 public statements about people with disabilities made by White House and Cabinet officials, and 32 federal bills introduced in 2025 that could affect the rights, services, or educational opportunities of individuals with disabilities. Statements were identified through a two-stage process that combined a custom Python-based web-scraping tool, which extracted verbatim, attributed quotations from news articles, press releases, interview transcripts, official speeches, and social media posts using the OpenAI GPT-4 API, with manual verification searches conducted in ChatGPT Plus and Perplexity AI Pro. Federal bills were identified through Congress.gov. All statements were reviewed by the authors to confirm accuracy, attribution, and date. Each statement and bill was independently scored by two human coders and by GPT-4 using an author-developed four-point rubric grounded in the social and human rights models of disability, ranging from 1 (dehumanizing) to 4 (affirming).

The data contain one record per statement, including the speaker's name and title, date, verbatim quotation, source, context, an analysis of the framing, a score from 1 (dehumanizing) to 4 (affirming), and the rationale for the score. The bills data are available on the project website and are not included in this deposit.

The study was approved by the university Institutional Review Board (March 2025) and was preregistered on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/hbfe5/).

The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) is a voluntary census of public libraries conducted annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, 2017, and 2018 surveys are the 28th, 29th, and 30th in the series, respectively. The American Institutes for Research (AIR) served as the data collection agent for all three surveys.

The PLS data files include all public libraries identified by state library administrative agencies in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the outlying territories of American Samoa and Guam. The Northern Mariana Islands participated in FY 2017 and FY 2018, and the U.S. Virgin Islands participated in FY 2018. The reporting unit in each state or territory for the survey is the administrative entity (AE), defined as the agency that is legally established under local or state law to provide public library service to the population of a local jurisdiction. In this survey, the terms public library and public library system mean an AE. The AE may have a single outlet or multiple outlets. The term "outlet" refers to a library point of service, which may be a physical building, bookmobile, or a books-by-mail provider. Each PLS collected the following information:

• Data from each public library, such as its name and address, population of legal service area, service outlets, collections, full-time-equivalent (FTE) staff, and operating revenue and expenditures (see Appendix F). These data were reported in the AE record.
• State characteristics data, including the state total population estimate, the total unduplicated population of legal service areas for the state, and the state's reporting period start and end dates (see the survey questionnaire in Appendix F, items 100-103). Each state library administrative agency reported these data in the state characteristics record because they are not library-level data.
• Data from each public library service outlet, such as its name and address, type, county location, square footage, public service hours per year, and number of weeks it is open (see Appendix F). These data were reported in the outlet record.

This data collection is useful to researchers, journalists, the public, and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. These data are used by federal, state and local officials, professional associations, and local practitioners for planning, evaluation, and policy making.

The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) provides statistics on the status of public libraries in the United States. It is a voluntary survey conducted annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 survey is the 27th in the series.

The data files include all public libraries identified by state library administrative agencies in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the outlying areas of American Samoa and Guam. The reporting unit for the survey is the administrative entity, defined as the agency that is legally established under local or state law to provide public library service to the population of a local jurisdiction. In this survey, the term public library means an administrative entity.

For Fiscal Year 2015, IMLS collected the following information via a web-based survey for the PLS:

• Library Data - Data on each public library, such as its name and address, population of legal service area, service outlets, collections, full-time-equivalent staff, and operating revenue and expenditures. State characteristics data, including the reporting period starting and ending dates, the state total population estimate, and the total unduplicated population of legal service areas for the state. These data are contained in dataset 1 and include 9,251 records; 9,231 were public libraries and 20 were administrative entities that closed or temporarily closed for FY 2015.
• State Data - Each state library agency reported these data on the "State Characteristics" record because they are not library-level data. These data are in dataset 2 and include 53 records, one for each state and outlying area.
• Outlet Data - Data on each public library service outlet, such as its name and address, type, county location, metropolitan status, square footage, public service hours per year, and number of weeks a library outlet is open. These data are in dataset 3 and include 17,408 total records. The file includes identifying information and a few basic data items for public library service outlets (central, branch, bookmobile, and books-by-mail-only outlets). The file includes 17,328 outlets in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, 8 outlets in the outlying areas, and 72 records for outlets that were reported as closed or were temporarily closed for FY 2015.

This data collection is useful to researchers, journalists, the public, and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. These data are used by federal, state and local officials, professional associations, and local practitioners for planning, evaluation, and policy making.

The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) provides statistics on the status of public libraries in the United States. It is a voluntary survey conducted annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 survey is the 26th in the series.

The data files include all public libraries identified by state library administrative agencies in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the outlying areas of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The reporting unit for the survey is the administrative entity, defined as the agency that is legally established under local or state law to provide public library service to the population of a local jurisdiction. In this survey, the term public library means an administrative entity.

For Fiscal Year 2014, IMLS collected the following information via a web-based survey for the PLS:

• Library Data - Data on each public library, such as its name and address, population of legal service area, service outlets, collections, full-time-equivalent staff, and operating revenue and expenditures. State characteristics data, including the reporting period starting and ending dates, the state total population estimate, and the total unduplicated population of legal service areas for the state. These data are contained in dataset 1 and include 9,305 records; 9,295 were public libraries and 10 were administrative entities that closed or temporarily closed for FY 2014.
• State Data - Each state library agency reported these data on the "State Characteristics" record because they are not library-level data. These data are in dataset 2 and include 56 records, one for each state and outlying area.
• Outlet Data - Data on each public library service outlet, such as its name and address, type, county location, metropolitan status, square footage, public service hours per year, and number of weeks a library outlet is open. These data are in dataset 3 and include 17,566 total records, 17,492 are public library service outlets (central, branch, bookmobile, and books-by-mail-only outlets). The remaining 74 records are outlets that closed or temporarily closed for FY 2014.

This data collection is useful to researchers, journalists, the public, and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. These data are used by federal, state and local officials, professional associations, and local practitioners for planning, evaluation, and policy making.

The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) provides statistics on the status of public libraries in the United States. It is a voluntary survey conducted annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 survey is the 25th in the series.

The data files include all public libraries identified by state library administrative agencies in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the outlying areas of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The reporting unit for the survey is the administrative entity, defined as the agency that is legally established under local or state law to provide public library service to the population of a local jurisdiction.

For Fiscal Year 2013, IMLS collected the following information via a web-based survey for the PLS:

• Library Data - Data on each public library, such as its name and address, population of legal service area, service outlets, collections, full-time-equivalent staff, and operating revenue and expenditures State characteristics data, including the reporting period starting and ending dates, the state total population estimate, and the total unduplicated population of legal service areas for the state. These data are contained in dataset 1 and include 9,309 records; 9,290 were public libraries and 19 were administrative entities that closed in or temporarily closed for FY 2012.
• State Data - Each state library agency reported these data on the "State Characteristics" record because they are not library-level data. These data are in dataset 2 and include 56 records, one for each state and outlying area.
• Outlet Data - Data on each public library service outlet, such as its name and address, type, county location, metropolitan status, square footage, public service hours per year, and number of weeks a library outlet is open. These data are in dataset 3 and include 17,554 total records, 17,463 are public library service outlets (central, branch, bookmobile, and books-by-mail-only outlets). The remaining 91 records are outlets that closed or temporarily closed for FY 2012.

This data collection is useful to researchers, journalists, the public, and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. These data are used by federal, state and local officials, professional associations, and local practitioners for planning, evaluation, and policy making.

The State of the First Amendment survey, conducted annually (since 1997, except for 1998) examines public attitudes toward freedom of speech, press, religion, and the rights of assembly and petition. Core questions, asked each year, include awareness of First Amendment freedoms, overall assessments of whether there is too much or too little freedom of speech, press, and religion in the United States, levels of tolerance for various types of public expression (such as flag-burning and singing songs with potentially offensive lyrics), levels of tolerance for various journalistic behaviors, attitudes toward prayer in schools, and level of support for amending the Constitution to prohibit flag-burning or defacement.

There were additional (non-core) questions asked for each year the survey was conducted. Each year, the additional questions asked about the following topics:

• 1997: how important various Constitutional rights are to people, whether people engaged in various kinds of public or political behaviors during the past year, and how free people feel to speak their minds in various settings
• 1999: attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco advertisements, levels of tolerance for sexually explicit content in various media, and attitudes toward television and Internet content ratings
• 2000: attitudes toward the role of government in political campaigns, the role of religion and the use of religious materials in classrooms, and attitudes toward government regulation of content on the Internet
• 2001: attitudes toward the creation of the federal Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and attitudes toward the regulation of political campaign contributions
• 2002: attitudes toward media coverage of the "war on terrorism," whether the government has the right to monitor the activities of religious groups even if it means infringing upon religious freedoms, and levels of support for public access to various types of local government records
• 2003: attitudes toward corporate ownership of news organizations, media coverage of the Iraq War and "the war on terrorism," whether the government has the right to monitor the activities of religious groups even if it means infringing upon religious freedoms, and whether controversial political remarks by entertainers affect the likelihood of attending performances or purchasing products featuring such entertainers
• 2004: the effort to amend the Constitution to ban flag-burning, proposals to expand regulation of so-called indecent material in the media, attempts by government officials and private advocates to lower the "wall of separation between church and state," and scandals involving made-up stories and facts at major news organizations
• 2005: attitudes toward religious freedom in the workplace, freedom of expression in the public schools, the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, the confidentiality of library records, and government's ability to restrict various types of content in public broadcasts
• 2006: whether the press should be allowed to publish works that criticize the actions of the government during wartime and whether political candidates should be allowed to criticize the actions of the government while campaigning during wartime

For each survey year, computer-aided telephone interviews (CATI) were conducted, and the number of respondents across the data files ranges from 1,000 to 1,025.

The 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study is a telephone-recruited Internet panel with two cohorts recruited using nearly identical methods. The first cohort was recruited in late 2007 using random-digit-dialing (RDD) methods common to telephone surveys. Prospective respondents were offered $10 per month to complete surveys on the Internet each month for 21 months, from January 2008 through September 2009. Those without a computer and Internet service were offered a free web appliance, MSN TV 2, and free Internet service for the duration of the study. The second cohort was recruited the same way in the summer of 2008 and asked to join the panel beginning in September 2008. The recruitment interview was conducted by telephone in nearly all cases. A small number of respondents completed the recruitment survey on the Internet after failing to complete a telephone interview. Before the first monthly survey, most respondents also completed an online profile survey consisting primarily of demographic questions.

To minimize panel attrition and conditioning effects, only 7 of the 21 monthly surveys are about politics. Other surveys are about a variety of non-political topics. The panelists answered political questions prepared by ANES in January, February, June, September, October, and November 2008. With certainty, the panel answered more political questions in May 2009.

Note that the 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study is entirely separate from the 2008 ANES Time Series study, which was conducted using the traditional ANES method of face-to-face interviews before and after the 2008 election. Although there are a few questions common to both studies, the samples and methods are different. For further details, see the User Guide. Complete documentation is available on the ANES Web site.

This data collection was created to study agenda-setting and alternative specification in the federal government. It concentrates on two federal policy areas, health and transportation, but the theories generated in the research may be quite widely applicable beyond those two areas. The aim of the work was not to study how issues are decided in some authoritative process like a congressional vote, but instead to study how issues get to be issues in the first place, how items rise and fall on the governmental agenda, and how the alternatives from which choices are made are generated.

The results of the study were published in John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (First Edition, Little Brown, 1984; Second Edition, HarperCollins, 1995; Longman Classics in Political Science Edition, Longman, 2003; Updated Second Edition, with Epilogue on Health Care Reform, Longman, 2011). The study's methods are described in detail in the Appendix to that book, and are included as part of the documentation for this data collection.

The major data source is a set of interviews that John Kingdon conducted in four waves (the summers of 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979), with well-informed respondents either in the federal government (both congressional and executive) or involved in health or transportation policy around the federal government (e.g., lobbyists, journalists, academics, consultants). "Elite and specialized" interviews, to use Lewis Dexter's terminology (see Elite and Specialized Interviewing, Northwestern University Press, 1969), are conducted differently than standard survey research interviewing. The idea is to have a two-way conversation with a well-informed and highly involved respondent, rather than strict question and response. As such, the list of questions used was not a hard-and-fast interview schedule or questionnaire, but a kind of guide. The questions were not always asked in the same order, and indeed, not all of the questions were always asked. Question wording may have varied slightly from one interview to another. Various ad hoc probes were inserted as they seemed appropriate. Sometimes in this sort of interview, the interviewer makes a statement rather than asking a question. Still, the central questions were usually asked in roughly the same wording. Thus, when the interview write-up says "Q1," that is the first question in the standard list of questions used.

Interviews were not taped or otherwise recorded verbatim, since the principal investigator firmly believed that, with these sorts of respondents, taping dampened their ability and willingness to be candid. The principal investigator did not want respondents to feel that they were on the record, as respondents were accustomed to dealing with reporters, and when a microphone was in their face, they knew the encounter would be on the record. Notes were taken during the interview, and then written up immediately after; hence, the typescripts of the interviews are labeled "write-up" instead of "transcript." All 247 write-ups have a respondent identification number and the date of the interview on the top of the first page.

The principal investigator also coded the interview write-ups into quantitative data files, despite the nonrandom selection of respondents and the fluid conduct of the interviews. He did this to support quantitative judgments (e.g., "this issue was mentioned frequently in 1978 and not frequently in 1979," or "this factor was hardly ever mentioned in the interviews"). Each interview was coded by two coders, and then their judgments were combined. In addition to generic identifying information, there are two general categories of variables. One category, referred to as "global codes" in the codebook, is composed of ratings of the importance of each of several actors (e.g., mass media, president himself, interest groups, congressional staffers). The other category, referred to as "problem codes" is a coding of the problems that respondents discussed in their interviews, and is divided into health and transportation. A full description of coding procedures is contained in the data collection documentation.

Interview data are supplemented by a series of 23 case studies in health and transportation, and by some attention to other sources of data like congressional hearing records and public opinion data. In addition to various nonquantitative uses of the cases in the study, a quantitative dataset of the case studies was created. Two coders worked independently to judge each of a set of hypothesized influences in the case to be very important, somewhat important, of little importance, or not important. For example, after reading all of the materials for a given case study, a coder would rate the importance of congressional staffers as "very, somewhat, of little, or not" important. In contrast to the interviews, differences between the two coders were not resolved by a combination rule. Instead, the principal investigator and the two coders discussed and reached consensus in each instance in which there had been a disagreement. A full description of coding procedures is contained in the data collection documentation.