DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03344.v3
title: New York Times New York City Poll, August 2001
title: Version 3

description: This special topic poll, conducted on August 5-10, 2001,
was designed to elicit respondents' opinions of the New York City
(NYC) mayoral candidates and their more general views of the
city. Residents of the state of New York were asked whether, in ten
years, NYC would be a better or worse place to live. They gave an
approval rating of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and opinions of various
mayoral candidates, including Herman Badillo, Michael Bloomberg,
Fernando Ferrer, Michael Green, Alan G. Hevesi, and Peter
Vallone. Respondents indicated whether they had voted for Giuliani in
1997, the amount of attention they had given to the 2001 mayoral
campaign, their likelihood of voting in the primary, which candidate
they would vote for, and their actual likelihood of voting for
mayor. Opinions were elicited regarding which problem the new mayor
should concentrate on, whether NYC had gotten better or worse in the
past four years, the condition of the economy, their perception of
safety, effectiveness and impartiality of the police force, NYC public
transportation, the cost and availability of housing, unemployment
rates, and whether respondents wanted to stay in NYC or live
elsewhere. Respondents commented on the performance of Harold Levy as
Chancellor of NYC schools, their satisfaction with NYC schools,
support of tuition vouchers, and whether the NYC Board of Education
should be eliminated. Those polled also gave their opinions of the
state of race relations in NYC, whether organized prayer should be
allowed in public schools, their opinions of the death penalty, and
whether they or a family member had been a victim of crime in
NYC. Respondents were also asked which characteristics they would
prefer in a mayor, how they felt campaigns should be funded, and
whether a new mayor would improve NYC. Background information on
respondents includes political affiliation, whether respondents'
financial situations had improved or worsened in the previous four
years, whether their children attended public or private school, the
importance of religion to them, their religious preference, marital
status, education, age, race, and income category.
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: New York Times New York City Poll, August 2001
description: Adult population of New York City aged 18 and over having
telephones at home.
description: (1) 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, hardcopy documentation has been converted
to machine-readable form and variables have been recoded to ensure
respondents' anonymity. (2) The codebook is provided by ICPSR as a
Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed
by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader
software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to
obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web
site.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.