DOI: 10.3886/icpsr07576
title: American Political Event Data, 1968-1972
title: Archival Version

description: Using a political event coding system, this data collection
 describes 8,768 events and press items sampled from 42,000 entries in
 THE NEW YORK TIMES between 1968 and 1972. These data were generated in
 order to apply events data to the study of the emergence and
 processing of political issues in the United States and to test a
 number of hypotheses regarding the types of events associated with
 various political issues. Approximately 4,600 cases are events in
 which an actor attempts to influence a target. The remaining cases are
 reports of press items such as editorials and columns. The data
 include: (1) whether it was a political event (i.e., one in which an
 actor directs some action toward a target in a political system in
 order to influence the behavior of the target) or a press item (i.e.,
 information about the domestic issue from either a newspaper column or
 a newspaper editorial), (2) the domestic issue (one of 40 possible
 categories), (3) the domestic subissue, (4) the date and the page of
 the newspaper in which the article describing the event was found, (5)
 the press treatment or coverage of the event, (6) the actor initiating
 the event (coded in one of 100 categories including both governmental
 and nongovernmental actors), (7) the federal role favored by the actor
 regarding the issue, (8) whether the actor specialized in dealing with
 the issue, (9) type of action initiated by the actor, (10) the mode of
 action, (11) the target of the event, and (12) the weight of the event
or press item.
description: Both random and systematic probability sampling was
 used. The events sampled concerned 40 domestic United States political
 issues. Twenty of those 40 were designated as major political issues
 and 20 were deemed minor political issues. To choose major political
 issues, the investigator examined the responses to a question in the
 November 1970 Harris Poll, which asked, "What are the top two or three
 problems facing people such as yourself you would like to see the new
 Congress do something about?" The 20 issues that elicited the most
 responses were regarded as the major domestic political issues. THE
 NEW YORK TIMES was the basic source for the major political issues due
 to its reputation for accuracy and its function as an information
 source to elites. Using the NEW YORK TIMES INDEX, approximately 50
 entries for each issue area were coded per year. To simplify the
 sampling process, systematic rather than random sampling was used. In
 order to find a sample of minor issues, the "Table of Contents" of the
 1970 CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY ALMANAC, which was a relatively complete
 list of the issues considered in the political system that year, was
 used. A random sample of domestic issues was chosen from that
 list. Those which duplicated the major issues were deleted. The
 resulting data were weighted to approximate the total number of events
 pertaining to that issue in the INDEX. The weights (N18) equalize the
 data, making estimation of the characteristics of the whole population
of reported events and press items possible.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: American Political Event Data, 1968-1972
description: United States domestic events of national importance in
1968-1972.
description: 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.