DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02299.v1
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll, February 1996
title: Version 1

description: This poll, conducted February 22-24, 1996, 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 of this poll were asked about their opinions of President Bill Clinton and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, the economy, and the situation in Bosnia. Respondents were also asked to give their opinions about presidential candidates Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, Lamar Alexander, and Steve Forbes. Respondents were asked for whom they would vote if the 1996 presidential and United States House of Representatives election were being held that day, which candidate they felt cared most about people's needs and problems, and whether each candidate had the ability to be an effective president. A series of questions addressed issues pertaining to Social Security benefits including whether respondents thought the Social Security system would have money available to provide benefits to them when they retire, whether Social Security taxes should be increased, whether Social Security benefits should be reduced for individuals with higher incomes, and whether some of the Social Security trust fund should be invested in the stock market. A series of questions asked respondents with children between the ages of 2 and 12 about the amount of time their child spent watching cable television, video tapes, using a personal computer, and playing video games the previous day. Additional questions in this poll addressed the condition of the national economy, abortion, homosexuals and homosexual relationships, organized prayer in public schools, immigration, the sale of pornography and handguns, and United States trade. Demographic variables include sex, race, age, household income, education level, the presence of children and teenagers in the household, marital status, religious preference, whether or not respondents considered themselves to be born-again Christians, political party affiliation, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, voter participation history and registration status, and political philosophy.
description: The data contain weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used for analysis.
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: Performed consistency checks.; Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
description: telephone interview 
The data available for download are not weighted, and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.
 The data and documentation for this study were acquired from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. 
The variables AREACODE and EXCHANGE were recoded for confidentiality.
The original data file contained three records per case and was reformatted into a data file with one record per case.
ICPSR created a unique sequential record identifier variable named CASEID.
This data collection was produced by CBS News in New York, New York.
Value labels for unknown codes were added in variable Q7.
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over having a telephone at home.
description: Stratified random digit dialing. 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).