DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02459.v3
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #2, February 1998
title: Version 3

description: This poll, conducted February 8, 1998, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton, and independent counsel Kenneth Starr. A series of questions focused on the alleged affair between former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton. Topics covered the overall importance of this situation to the American people, media coverage of the scandal, Starr's investigation, whether this investigation was interfering with Clinton's ability to govern, whether Clinton and Lewinsky actually engaged in a sexual affair, and whether Clinton encouraged Lewinsky or anyone else to lie to cover up the affair. Those queried were also asked if they were really interested in Clinton's sex life, and what they believed should happen to Clinton if the allegations were true. Respondents were also asked for their opinions on Clinton's handling of the situation with Iraq, specifically if air strikes should be used to force Iraq to comply with United Nations regulations and whether the Allies should be consulted before air strikes began. A final set of questions asked whether lying in general was ever justified or necessary, whether respondents knew anyone who had cheated on their spouse, and whether public officials were currently more likely to commit adultery or if the media just reported on it more often. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, political party affiliation, political philosophy, marital status, household income, voter registration and participation history, and the presence and ages of children in the household.
description: The data contain a weight variable, WEIGHT, that should be used in analyzing the data.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
description: telephone interview 
The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.
To preserve respondent confidentiality, codes in variables AREACODE, EXCHANGE, and LASTFOUR have been replaced with blank codes.
This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.
description: Persons aged 18 years and older living in households with telephones in the United States.
description: Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within households, the respondent selected was the adult living in the household who last had a birthday and who was home at the time of the interview.