DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03350
title: CBS News Monthly Poll, May 2001
title: Archival Version

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 to give their
opinions of President George W. Bush and his handling of the
presidency, foreign policy, the economy, and the environment, as well
as their views on the recent energy shortages and Timothy McVeigh's
impending execution. Respondents also specified the single most
important problem facing the government, gave their approval ratings
of Vice President Dick Cheney and Congress, and gave their views on
the national economy and whether it was getting better or worse, or
staying the same. Those polled stated whether they supported or
opposed the death penalty and if opposed, the reason why, the type of
penalty that should be imposed for murder, whether the death penalty
is a deterrent to murder, and how many innocent people they believed
were executed. Respondents' level of confidence in the Supreme Court
was elicited along with their opinions on whether the United States
Senate or the President should appoint justices to the Supreme Court,
and whether Bush's Supreme Court nominees would be too conservative,
not conservative enough, or about right. Respondents were asked
whether it was more important to produce energy or protect the
environment, which option Bush favored, and which should be a higher
priority for the government - increasing production of petroleum,
coal, and natural gas, or encouraging conservation. Respondents also
stated whether they would be willing to accept higher prices for
electricity and gasoline to protect the environment and what effect an
increase in gas prices to $3 per gallon would have on them. They were
asked whether they approved of building more nuclear power plants to
generate electricity and whether they believed that the energy
shortages were real or whether the public was just being told there
were shortages to justify higher prices. Questions were posed on
whether the oil industry had too much influence on the Bush
administration's energy policies and what effect this influence would
have on the administration's energy policies. Respondents were also
queried on Timothy McVeigh's impending execution--whether they favored
the death penalty for McVeigh, what sentence they would prefer, who,
if anyone, should be allowed to view his execution, and whether they
would want to watch the execution. They rated the media's handling of
the execution, including the amount of time they devoted to covering
it. Respondents were asked to assign blame for the California power
shortages, decide whether the state or federal government should take
responsibility, and state how likely they believed that power
shortages were in their area. Respondents also gave their opinions of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the issue of missing documents
in Timothy McVeigh's case. Background information on respondents
includes age, race, gender, religion, marital status, number of
children, education, income classification, whether they had money
invested in the stock market, voter status, and political leanings.
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, May 2001
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.