DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03705.v1
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #2, September 2002
title: Version 1

description: This poll 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 George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, the economy, and the campaign against terrorism. Respondents were also asked for their views on whether the economy and jobs or terrorism and national security should be a higher priority, how the national economy was doing, and whether Congress was handling its job well. Opinions were elicited on how the United Nations was handling its job, whether the United States had too much, too little, or just the right amount of influence on the U.N., whether the United States should take the leading role in solving international conflicts or crises, whether it was okay to criticize the president's decisions on military issues and proposals on economic or other domestic issues, whether the United States should attack another country before it was attacked, if the United States had the right to attack if it was believed that another country might attack first, and if the United States should attack Iraq before waiting to be attacked or if an attack might occur. Respondents were asked how much they had heard about the possibility of military action against Iraq, whether the Bush administration clearly explained the United States position regarding this possibility, whether the respondent approved of military action against Iraq, whether military action should take place soon or if the United States should wait for the U.N., whether the United States should wait for support of its allies, and whether the United States should follow U.N. recommendations. Respondents were asked if they believed that the U.N. would be able to prevent Saddam Hussein from building or keeping weapons of mass destruction, and if the situation in Iraq would be resolved without fighting. In regard to Congress, respondents were asked whether President Bush should receive Congressional approval before taking military action, when Congress should vote on authorizing military action, and whether Congress had asked too many questions about President Bush's policy toward Iraq. Respondents were asked if the removal of Saddam Hussein from power was worth the potential loss of American lives, whether military action should take place if it meant substantial military casualties, whether respondents would favor military action if the war would last for several months or years, and whether military action in Iraq would increase or decrease the threat of terrorism. Other questions focused on whether respondents believed Iraq currently possessed weapons of mass destruction, whether they believed Iraq would use these weapons against the United States, whether they believed Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda members were responsible for the September 11 attacks, how successful military action in Iraq would be, what the likelihood of another terrorist attack in the next few months was, how confident they were in the ability of the United States to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, and whether the United States could claim victory over terrorism if bin Laden were not captured or killed. Respondents were asked for their opinions on how well the war in Afghanistan was going, whether the United States should concentrate on bin Laden and al Qaeda or on Iraq, whether bin Laden or Saddam Hussein was a greater threat, and what they thought about fighting wars both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, respondents were asked about their political party preference, whether they had investments, whether they had voted and for whom in the presidential election of 2000, and what their political views were. Background information on respondents includes marital status, religious preference, education, age, Hispanic descent,ethnicity, income, and whether or not other phone lines were in the home.
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..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
description: This collection has not been processed by ICPSR staff. ICPSR is distributing the data and documentation for this collection in essentially the same form in which they were received. When appropriate, documentation has been converted to Portable Document Format (PDF), data files have been converted to non-platform-specific formats, and variables have been recoded to ensure respondents' privacy.
The ASCII data file may have been replaced if the previous version was formatted with multiple records per case. A frequency file, which contains the authoritative column locations, has been added to the collection.
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over having a telephone at home.
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).