Datasets from 1968 reflected the concerns of the day. At the national level, Gallup polls covered public attitudes on the biggest stories in the news: the 1968 election, Vietnam, and racial problems. A NORC Amalgam survey included NORC-sponsored questions on poverty and values, as well as a series sponsored by Prof. Zahava Blum of Johns Hopkins University on responses to the assassination of Martin Luther King.
State polling datasets are available from the Texas Poll, the Minnesota Poll, the MidContinent Omnibus Survey of Minnesota, and the Field Poll of California. Each of these organizations’ studies touched on the election, the unrest facing the country, and the war. Some questions addressed cultural changes, like attitudes towards sideburns and long hair on men.
Polling from outside the United States investigated these issues and more. A Marplan-Pesquisas e Etudos de Mercado, Ltd. Poll in Rio de Janeiro addressed topics as diverse as problems in the Middle East, the death of Che Guevara, and the effect of hippie philosophy on society. The Institute Francais d’Opinion Publique Hopes and Fears study probed French attitudes on a number of major foreign policy issues and beliefs about the future of France, while an Israeli Institute of Applied Social Research Poll tackled concerns from terrorism to the perennial problems of dealing with government bureaucracy.