DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03346
title: CBS News Monthly Poll, August 2001
title: Archival Version

description: This poll is part of a continuing series of surveys that
solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other
political and social issues. The survey examined respondents' views
about George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, including
whether they approved of Bush's job performance, whether Bush was in
touch with what average people think, and whether Bush would
compromise with the Democrats in Congress in order to get things done.
Opinions were also gathered on Vice President Dick Cheney, former Vice
President Al Gore, and Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords. Respondents were
queried about what they thought was the most important problem for the
President and Congress to address in the coming year, whether they
approved of Congress' job performance, whether their opinions of the
Democratic and Republican parties were favorable or unfavorable, and
whether they thought the Democrats in Congress should work with Bush
in order to get things done or if they should stick to their positions
even if it meant not getting as much accomplished. Another set of
questions queried respondents on their views of the economy, including
whether they felt the economy was getting better, worse, or staying
the same, how they rated the overall condition of the stock market,
whether they felt the stock market would go up or down in the next
year, how much attention they paid to what happens in the stock
market, and whether they felt the United States was in an economic
recession. Respondents' opinions were also solicited on Social
Security and the federal budget. Questions were posed regarding
whether Bush or congressional Democrats were more likely to make the
right decisions about Social Security, keeping the economy strong, and
spending taxpayers' money. Respondents were also asked if they thought
it was possible to preserve programs like Social Security and
Medicare, to increase spending on the military and pay for the tax cut
enacted by Bush at the same time, whether the Social Security system
would have the money available to provide the benefits they were
expecting for retirement, whether individuals should be allowed to
invest a portion of their Social Security taxes on their own, whether
the government should be responsible to make up for losses as a result
of personal investing, how likely respondents would be to invest some
of their own Social Security taxes in the stock market, and whether
the government should be allowed to use the Social Security surplus to
help fund other government programs. In regard to the budget surplus,
respondents were asked if the lower budget surplus was a result of a
slowing economy or due to the tax cut, if getting the tax cut was
worth a lowering of the budget surplus, if a smaller budget surplus
was a good thing, whether they believed the White House or the
Congressional Budget Office's budget surplus figures, if the smaller
surplus would lead to government spending cuts in domestic programs,
and who was to blame for the shrinking budget surplus. Several
questions also probed respondents' views on the environment. Opinions
were solicited on Bush's handling of the environment, whether
producing energy or protecting the environment was more important,
whether the oil industry had too much influence on the Bush
administration's policies, and whether respondents approved of Bush's
energy bill. Respondents were also asked whether they were worried
about having enough savings for retirement, whether investment in the
stock market was safe, how much they knew about investing, whether
they currently had money invested in the stock market, whether they
currently had any retirement savings such as a pension plan or 401(k),
and whether they had changed their approach to investing as a result
of what had happened in the stock market over the past year. A final
set of questions asked thosepolled whether military spending should
be increased, whether the priority for government spending should be
the military or domestic programs, whether they supported United
States development of a missile defense system, and whether they
supported the death penalty. Background information on respondents
includes age, gender, education, race/ethnic identity, voter
registration, political party affiliation, political orientation,
marital status, number of children in the household, and household
income.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: CBS News Monthly Poll, August 2001
description: (1) 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. (2) The codebook is provided by ICPSR
as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was
developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF
reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how
to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web
site.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.