You can get your wave's dataset here... ATP WAVE DATASETS.
You need to clean this for modeling.
You can get your wave's questionnaire here... ATP WAVE QUESTIONNAIRES.
You use this for cleaning.
CODEBOOK AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR CLEANING DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABILITY FOR MOST WAVES
You can get your wave's topline here... ATP WAVE TOPLINES.
You use this for an overview of your wave.
You can make basic, univariate waves from this.
Find the corresponding questionnaires and datasets at Pew's American Trends Panel Datasets.
Click the link to the wave you found with step 1.
Scan the reports created by that wave for potentially useful research.
Read the questionnaire fairly thoroughly to see if the survey does benefit your research goals.
The topline can help you look quickly for overall trends.
Some waves have a "spreadsheet codebook," an .xsls file.
CODEBOOK AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR WORKING WITH AMERICAN TRENDS PANEL DATA
Use this to help you earlier waves that don't have codebooks.
Click Download Dataset
You need to be logged in to your free Pew account.
Unzip the file that downloads and unzip the file.
Review the questionnaire, toplines, codebook, etc. for project aligned information and data.
Find the file that is the dataset (either an SPSS or an SAV).
Move that file to a folder in your drive that you can find for the next step.
HINT: Toplines are for looking at the big picture, Questionnaires are for cleaning.