POLIS Database: Longitudinal Civic Participation and Leadership Data

38 civic organizations across 10 U.S. states are tracked in this individual-level dataset from the Civic Power Lab. It measures participation, leadership development, and political influence over time to study the gap between civic engagement and governing power. The data were collected under agreements with Harvard Kennedy School and last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling leadership development trajectories based on individual-level participation microdata.
• Analyzing the link between organizational leadership density and policy outcomes mentioned in the description.
• Comparing civic power-building mechanisms across different U.S. state electoral contexts.
• Studying participation-power gaps in multifaith and multiracial working-class constituencies.

Strengths

• Longitudinal design enabling tracking of individual participation and leadership over time.
• Covers 38 organizations across 10 states, spanning Democratic, Republican, and competitive electoral contexts.
• Includes mixed-methods research linking microdata to organizational-level policy and electoral outcomes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Organizations are not identified by name, limiting direct reproducibility of some analyses.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Civic Power Lab, Harvard Kennedy School

Collection Method

Collected under data use agreements between participating organizations and Harvard College.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-17 16:42:15; freshness should be verified.

Geography

10 U.S. states