Omnibus Project

The Omnibus Project coordinates and streamlines the development of a student subject pool for faculty and student research. Project coordinators collect data for a set of common variables, such as demographic information and political covariates, which are provided to all researchers submitting proposals. Individual researchers submit their survey questions and customize their own portion of the survey instrument. The subject pool will be comprised of students enrolled in departmental classes; some instructors will require participation or offer extra credit to students to participate in the study.

By simplifying the administrative hurdles to collecting original data, the project will strengthen the Government Department’s undergraduate research program and will provide opportunities for Government majors to conduct independent research for honors theses, independent studies, and research projects. The Omnibus will also provide faculty with a subject pool for pilot testing survey questions or lab protocols before conducting studies with larger, more representative samples.

Projects or Papers that have used Omnibus data include:

Issue Priority and Issue Proximity – Ron Rapoport

Desert and Details: Implications of Different Types of Luck – Maurits van der Veen

Empathy and International Development – Marcus Holmes

Impact of Social Pressure on Political Conformity – Taylor Feenstra

Increasing the Effectiveness of Political Campaign Mail – Meg Schwenzfeier

Political Chameleons – Jamie Settle and Taylor Carlson

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The Omnibus Project had evolved every year since it first began in 2013. For an overview of the project, read more here. You can find out more about the behind-the-scenes aspects of the project in interviews with the 2015-2016 student director and faculty co-director Jaime Settle. For more information about the scope and scale of the project, see the story here.