DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03706.v1
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #1, October 2002
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded October 3-6, 2002, is 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. Those surveyed were asked to give their approval rating of President George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy. Questions were posed regarding respondents' perception of the status of the economy and whether they thought that the economy was getting better, worse, or staying the same. Those surveyed were asked about the attention they paid to the current congressional elections, whether they followed the individual campaigns, the likelihood that they would vote, what party they were most likely to vote for, voter registration status, whether their local congressperson(s) deserved to be re-elected, and what issues would motivate the respondent to vote for a particular candidate. Questions pertaining to the federal government included whether the respondents believed that government functions better when Congress is controlled by the same party that controls the presidency, and the amount that Congress had accomplished in the past two years compared to previous congressional sessions. Respondents were also asked whether they believed the federal government paid attention to issues concerning the economy, the environment, Social Security, and welfare. Questions concerning foreign relations focused on the United States' relations with its European allies and whether the United States had less respect from other countries compared to two years prior. Those surveyed were asked their opinion of the Bush administration's handling of international problems, and whether the administration had a clear plan for its campaign against terrorism. Opinions were also gathered regarding the attention President Bush had paid to the economy, the impact of the Iraq War on the economy, and foreign policy problems. Respondents were asked whether President Bush had really tried to compromise with Democrats in Congress, or whether the Democrats had tried to work with President Bush. Additional questions asked whether President Bush and/or the Bush administration was more interested in protecting the rights of citizens or big corporations, how respondents felt about national defense and pre-emptive strikes, and whether criticism of the President's policy on military and economic decisions should be voiced publicly. Those surveyed were asked whether they approved of military action against Iraq, whether the Bush administration had a clear plan, when the United States should take military action against Iraq, whether Iraq presented a clear danger, whether respondents would favor or oppose the war in light of heavy United States and Iraqi civilian casualties, and the possibility of a long war. Respondents were asked to speculate on the effects of a war with Iraq, particularly with regard to the United States economy and future terrorist attacks. There were also questions posed about the Democratic and Republican parties, whether respondents had favorable or unfavorable opinions of each, whether they thought the parties were interested in protecting the rights of average citizens or protecting big corporations, and which party would be more likely to make the best decisions on issues concerning education, Social Security, national defense, terrorism, health care, the environment, and taxation. Personal finance questions included employment status, and whether or not the respondent had a 401k plan. Background information on respondents includes voting record, voter registration status, party identification, marital status, education level, religious preference, age, Hispanic nationality, ethnicity, years lived at current address, other phone lines available, and willingness to accept a callback.
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 recorded 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 (PSU) 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).