DOI: 10.3886/icpsr09803
title: CBS News/New York Times October Foreign Policy/Congressional Scandal Poll, October 5-7, 1991
title: Archival Version

description: This survey dealt primarily with foreign policy issues and the congressional check-writing scandal. Respondents were asked whether President George Bush had been spending too much of his time on foreign policy, whether the United States was in decline as a world power, how closely they followed news about foreign policy issues, which part of the world the president should focus his attention on and whether it was important enough to warrant taking attention away from problems at home, whether the United States was more respected in the world than it was ten years ago, if any country posed a serious military threat to the United States, how likely nuclear war was within the next ten years, and which country would be the number one economic power in the world in the next century. The survey also explored other foreign policy issues, including United States-Soviet relations in light of the break-up of the Soviet Union into different republics with separate governments, the war against Iraq, the involvement of the United States in establishing democracy in other countries, federal spending on military and defense programs, the nature of the changes in East-West relations brought about by recent world events, the relevance of a strong United States military and the maintenance of NATO, United States military intervention in trouble spots around the world, the funding and role of the Central Intelligence Agency, the future of nuclear weapons policy involving the United States and Soviet Union, circumstances under which the United States should give economic aid to the Soviet Union, the number of American troops stationed in Europe, United States relations with China, Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and the influence of Israel and Saudi Arabia on United States foreign policy. Respondents were also asked about the amount of attention they had given to the news of United States representatives writing bad checks, whether they thought the bad checks were written deliberately or by mistake, whether the congressional representative from the respondent's own district had knowingly written bad checks, if the respondent would vote for someone else if his/her congressman had knowingly written bad checks or had been slow in paying large bills at the congressional restaurant, and whether respondents considered the various free services received by members of Congress to be mostly unjustifiable privileges.
description: A variation of random digit dialing using primary sampling units (PSUs) was employed, consisting of blocks of 100 telephone numbers identical through the eighth digit and stratified by geographic region, area code, and size of place. Within households, respondents were selected using a method developed by Leslie Kish and modified by Charles Backstrom and Gerald Hursh (see Backstrom and Hursh, SURVEY RESEARCH [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1963]).
description: Datasets: DS1: CBS News/New York Times October Foreign Policy/Congressional Scandal Poll, October 5-7, 1991
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over living in households with telephones.
description: A weight variable has been included that must be used in any analysis. Telephone exchanges have been recoded to "999" and names of respondents have been blanked for reasons of confidentiality.