A novel qualitative data platform
The American Voices Project (AVP) is a nationally representative qualitative study of everyday life in the United States, based on more than 2,700 in-depth interviews with U.S. households conducted between 2019 and 2022. Interviews begin by asking respondents to “tell me the story of your life,” and continue with open-ended prompts that explore core life domains including work, family, health, education, consumption, politics, and inequality. Each interview is followed by a structured survey, and many respondents agreed to allow their responses to be linked with administrative data. Omnibus in design, AVP data support qualitative, mixed-methods, and computational social science research.
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Review the AVP methodology
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Explore two special issues of the Russell Sage Foundation Journal featuring research using the AVP (Part I and Part II)
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Read the AVP Crisis Monitoring Reports
Secure infrastructure supporting methodologically diverse research
The American Voices Project is committed to respecting respondent confidentiality and maintaining rigorous data protection standards. De-identified interview transcripts are made available to qualified researchers through a secure server platform that meets Stanford University privacy and data security requirements, and research findings must undergo a disclosure-avoidance review process before being publicly disclosed.
The AVP secure server platform supports qualitative and computational research workflows and includes access to software such as NVivo, R, Python, Stata, a locally hosted Ollama library, and Microsoft Office. For approved projects requiring additional computational capacity, access to Stanford University’s Carina high-performance computing cluster may be made available upon request.
Become a researcher
Researchers seeking access to AVP transcripts are welcome to submit a research project application for review by the AVP principal investigator team. Applications are evaluated for research fit, methodological feasibility, and confidentiality considerations. The review process may take several months, depending on project scope and the volume of applications received.
The AVP team welcomes research projects from a wide range of disciplinary and methodological backgrounds. Questions about access or eligibility may be directed to americanvoicesproject@stanford.edu.