DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04622.v1
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #2, August 2006
title: Version 1

description: This poll, conducted August 17-21, 2006, 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 whether they approved of the way President George W. Bush was handling the presidency and issues such as foreign policy and the economy. Views were sought on how well members of the United States Congress were handling their jobs, whether the country was going in the right direction, the most important problem facing the country, and the condition of the national economy. Opinions were collected on whether the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, how well it was doing in its efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq, and whether the United States had a responsibility to resolve conflict in the Middle East. A series of questions asked about the war on terrorism, the impact on the respondents' lives of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and whether respondents were willing to give up some personal freedoms to make the country safer from terrorism. They rated their confidence in the ability of the United States government to respond to natural disasters and protect its citizens from future terrorist attacks, and they answered a series of questions about local and federal government responses to Hurricane Katrina, how much progress had been made in rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and whether respondents knew anyone affected by Hurricane Katrina. Additional topics addressed global warming, racial/ethnic profiling of Arab Americans and other minorities, whether respondents had Internet access and visited Internet blog Web sites, and whether they considered themselves patriotic. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, education level, household income, marital status, religious preference, political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status and participation history, the presence of children and household members between the ages of 13 and 24, and whether respondents considered themselves to be born-again Christians.
description: The data contain weights that should be used for analysis.
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/New York Times Monthly Poll #2, August 2006
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: telephone interviewThe data available for download are not weighted, and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.The CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.The value label for code 38 in variable Q5 was assumed to be outdated and was changed to refer to the president in office at the time of the survey.Truncated value labels in Q50 and EDUC were corrected.