DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03756.v1
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #3, March 2003
title: Version 1

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 situation with Iraq, as well as their views on the United Nations and its handling of the situation with Iraq and other international problems. Respondents were asked to assess their confidence in Bush's ability to make the right decisions about the situation in Iraq and the use of military force to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power. Their views were sought on whether there was sufficient evidence that military action was necessary, whether diplomatic solutions had been exhausted, and whether United Nations weapons inspectors should be given additional time. A series of questions focused on the United Nations Security Council, including whether military action should be taken without the support of the United Nations, whether the United States should ask for United Nations consideration if a "no" vote was anticipated, and how the situation with Iraq would affect the United Nations' ability to influence future international matters. Those polled were asked about the implications of a war with Iraq: whether the removal of Hussein was worth the potential loss of American life, how a war would impact the United States economy, and whether the threat of terrorism against the United States would increase. Additional questions addressed the lack of French support for United States military action against Iraq, whether world leaders respected Bush, and whether Bush's mention of his religious beliefs when discussing possible military action against Iraq was appropriate. Background information on respondents includes age, gender, voter registration and participation history, political party, political orientation, marital status, religion, importance of religion in daily life, education, Hispanic descent, race, children in household, and household income.
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: Created variable labels and/or value labels..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
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.
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over having a telephone at home.
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).