DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03459.v3
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #2, January 2002
title: Version 3

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 if they approved
of President George W. Bush's handling of the campaign against
terrorism, foreign policy, and the economy. Those queried were also
asked for their views on the current condition of the economy, whether
it was getting better or worse, and whether they were optimistic or
pessimistic about the next three years with Bush as president.
Respondents were asked to indicate what they liked best and least
about what he had done so far. Respondents were asked whether they
approved of Dick Cheney's handling of his role as Vice President and
how he compared with previous vice presidents. Next, respondents were
queried on their opinions of the war in Afghanistan and how it was
going for the United States. Respondents' views on a number of issues
related to Social Security and their retirement were elicited as
well. The collapse of the Texas-based energy company, Enron, was the
focus of the next set of questions. Respondents were asked how much
they had heard regarding Enron, and whether they felt Enron
chairperson Kenneth Lay, other Enron executives, or anyone in the Bush
administration had done anything wrong with respect to the company's
collapse. Respondents were asked whether they felt policy decisions
had ever been changed by politicians as a direct result of campaign
contributions from major contributors, and whether they felt the oil
and energy industries had too much or too little influence on the Bush
administration. Also regarding Enron, respondents were asked whether
senior executives should have been able to sell their stock in the
company prior to its collapse, and whether the federal government
should have intervened to prevent the collapse. Next, respondents were
queried on how they felt regarding their civil liberties: whether they
were concerned about losing some liberties as a result of the Bush
administration's campaign against terrorism, and whether they would be
willing to give up certain liberties in order to reduce the threat of
terrorism. Background information on respondents includes age, gender,
race, religion, education, political party, political orientation,
marital status, number of children in the household, and income.
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 Monthly Poll #2, January 2002
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over
having telephones at home.
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' anonymity.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.