DOI: 10.3886/icpsr31570.v1
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #2, April 2010
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded April 28 to May 2, 2010, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. A national sample of 1,125 adults were surveyed, including an oversample 412 Catholic individuals. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way Barack Obama was handling his job as president, foreign policy, the economy, and health care. Opinions were sought on Israel, the leadership of the Catholic Church, and Pope Benedict XVI. Respondents were asked whether they thought the Vatican or most parish priests in the United States were in touch with the needs of Catholics, whether they were opposed to letting Catholic priests get married or letting women be ordained as Catholic priests, how important it was to them that their children practice the religion in which they were raised, how comfortable they would be if their child was alone with their parish priests, how closely they had been following the news about the reports of past sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, whether they thought the Vatican and the Pope did a good job handling the reports of sexual abuse, and whether they thought the problem of sexual abuse was a more common problem in the Catholic Church than other faiths. Opinions were collected on United States bishops and whether respondents thought the bishops were doing a better job than they previously did in dealing with the priests who sexually abused children, whether the bishops tried to prevent sexual abuse in the past or cover it up, whether the bishops have enforced the policy of performing extensive background checks and psychological testing on persons wanting to become a priest in the United States, and whether this screening policy is going too far. Respondents were also asked if they thought the policy of having a priest permanently removed from the ministry and barred from performing priestly duties was fair in cases of priests who had sexually abused children. Respondents were also asked whether celibacy or homosexuality among priests in the Catholic church were major factors contributing to child sexual abuse by priests, whether reports of sexual abuse led respondents to question the authority of the Vatican, whether reports of sexual abuse have made respondents uncomfortable around their own parish priests, whether the respondent or anyone in their household had given money to a Catholic parish or organization in the previous 12 months, and if so, whether they had increased giving since the reports of abuse became public. Information was collected on whether the reports of sexual abuse affected the respondent's or their children's involvement in Catholic Church activities, their Mass attendance, or their feelings about remaining in the Catholic faith, whether they thought the media accurately reported the stories of child sexual abuse by priests, how much respondents had heard about the Vatican conducting a study on the quality of life of nuns, and whether respondents supported it. Other topics covered the national economy, job security, legal and illegal immigration in the United States, the new law in Arizona allowing police officers to question those they suspect are living in the country illegally. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, education level, household income, religious preference, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, political philosophy, and voter registration status.
description: The data contain weight variables that should be used in analyzing the data. According to the CBS News Web site, the data were weighted to match United States Census Bureau breakdowns on age, sex, race, education, and region of the country. The data were also adjusted for the fact that people who share a telephone with others have less chance to be contacted than people who live alone and have their own telephones, and that households with more than one telephone number have more chances to be called than households with only one telephone number.
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.; Standardized missing values..
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 CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.
The data contain an oversample of Catholic individuals, as identified by the OSMP variable.
This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.
description: Persons aged 18 years and older living in households with telephones in the United States.
description: A variation of random-digit dialing (RDD) 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. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. 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). This poll included an oversample of individuals of Catholic faith.