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The Survey of Russian Elites consists of one dataset that covers the years 1993, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. The data were collected as part of a larger study of mass-elite interactions in post-Soviet Russia, with particular emphasis on the links between the domestic political economy and foreign policy perspectives. The dataset includes questions on international relations, threat perceptions, foreign policy decision-making, domestic politics, and economic issues.

In particular, respondents were asked their opinions about the national interests of Russia, the role of military force in international relations, the greatest threats to stability and security, the enlargement of the European Union, NATO expansion, the need for order in Russia, and how closely Russia should follow the path of developed countries. Additional questions asked respondents about their level of influence on foreign policy decision-making, how they find out about world and domestic events, how often they discuss such events with friends or family members, whether the United States represents a threat to Russia, whether they favor giving military aid to other countries, the importance of various foreign policy goals to Russia, the influence of various governmental institutions on foreign policy, and the permissibility of using military force. Questions focusing on domestic issues asked about their attitudes regarding government spending, the rights of individuals versus those of society, the role of political competition, the responsibility of the government to its citizens, the importance and meaning of democracy, and the type of political system that is most appropriate for Russia. Respondents were also asked about Russia's relations with other countries (e.g., Ukraine, Belarus, Japan, and China), various forms of property ownership, their willingness to open a new business, national pride, political protests, the environment, their views toward immigrants and other societal groups, and Russia's political and economic future.

Demographic questions include nationality, education, occupation of the respondent and other family members, sex, age, country of birth, marital status, language spoken in the home, income level, household composition, political party affiliation, religion, military service, and foreign travel.

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.