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The Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project (GMCL) is a national study of America's political leadership in the 21st century, with a focus on race, ethnicity, and gender. The project specifically addresses African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Asian American elected officials in U.S. politics. The 2000 U.S. Census points to a need to understand the role of gender and race/ethnicity in today's elected leaders and how this increasingly diversified leadership is becoming incorporated into the governing structures of a nation projected to be "majority-minority" within the next fifty years.

Key components of the GMCL Project include a national database of more than 10,000 elected officials of color, by race and gender; an annotated bibliography and analytical framework on the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, class; and an interactive project website.

The Survey of State Legislators Relationship with their Districts, 2008 collection represents data from state legislators within states that passed an initiative or referendum on same-sex marriage and who responded to a fall 2008 mail survey.

The legislators were surveyed about information they use to make decisions (including measures of trustee and delegate styles), how much time they and their staff spend on different tasks, how they try to stay in contact with their constituents (communication methods and social media use), as well as their perceptions of their constituents issue positions. Data were also collected about the district population demographics and ideologies. Additional information was collected about the legislators' previous positions, previous election, and their ambitions regarding whether they aspired to hold a similar office or otherwise.

Demographic information included in this collection are sex, year born, and political ideology.

Job Satisfaction in the House of Representatives, 1999, reflects data collected from a mail survey of former members of the House of Representatives conducted in the Summer of 1999. The survey was funded by a grant from the Dirksen Congressional Center and the Caterpiller Foundation.

The collection includes data about former members who left congress between 1970 and 1999; of the 401 former members who were sent surveys 228 responded for a response rate of about 57%. The respondents were surveyed about reasons why they left congress, their relationships with their colleagues, satisfaction with position, and aspects of their family. Demographic variables included in this dataset are marital status and political party affiliation.

This study is based on face-to-face interviews with Wisconsin candidates, both winners and losers in the general election, running for various offices in 1964. Half of the sample is composed of a census of all 1964 Wisconsin candidates for the United States Congress and statewide elective office. The other half is a stratified random sample of candidates for the state legislature (both senate and assembly), chosen to equal in number the number of congressional and statewide candidates. The stratification is by geography in the state of Wisconsin.

For more information on the study, including detailed sampling and method information, please refer to Kingdon, J.W. (1968). Candidates for office: Beliefs and strategies. New York: Random House.

The core of this data collection is a set of interviews with a stratified random sample of members of the House conducted during the first session of the Ninety-First Congress in 1969. Rather than asking respondents in general about how they make decisions, the interviews concentrated on some specific vote or votes that were currently or very recently under consideration. The interview sought to develop a life history of each member's decision, including the steps through which the representative went, the considerations which he weighted, and the political actors who influenced him. These interview data were supplemented by a good deal of immersion in the process: repeated conversations with staff, lobbyists, and journalists, the reading of documents, and observations of committee meetings and floor debates.

Each of the sampled members was interviewed several times during the course of the session on different votes. It should be emphasized that the unit of analysis is the decision, not the congressman, or in other words, the number of representatives multiplied by the number of decisions on which each was interviewed. All interviews were conducted face-to-face in Washington D.C. in 1969. To minimize recall deficiencies, respondents were interviewed at the time of the vote or within the following few days.

For more information on the study, including detailed sampling and method information, please refer to Kingdon, J.W. (1989). Congressman's voting decisions. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.