DOI: 10.3886/icpsr06561.v1
title: American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1994
title: Version 1

description: This study is part of a quadrennial series designed to investigate the opinions and attitudes of both the general public and a select group of opinion leaders (or elites) on matters relating to foreign policy, and to define the parameters of public opinion within which decision-makers must operate. Both general public and elite respondents were queried regarding the biggest problems facing the United States, the spending levels for various federal government programs, the role of Congress in determining foreign policy, the impact of foreign policy on issues like prices and unemployment, and the Clinton Administration's handling of various problems such as the overall foreign policy, the overall trade policy, immigration, and the relations with Latin America, Japan, Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Questions were also asked about the government's reactions to the ongoing situations in Bosnia, North Korea, Haiti, Cuba, Rwanda, and the Middle East, the importance of various countries to America's vital interests, and possible adversaries or threats to the United States in the near future. Issues like the presence of NATO troops in Western Europe, the military role of Japan and Germany, the economic unification of Western Europe, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the illegal drugs problem were also explored. In addition, the elites were asked several questions about their political party affiliation and the strength of that affiliation. Demographic data such as religious preference, marital status, employment status, household composition, education, age, Hispanic origin, race, sex, and income were only collected for the general population sample.
description: "DS2: General Population Data" includes the variable WEIGHT that must be used in any analysis. This variable is designed to bring the demographic characteristics of the sample into alignment with the estimates of the demographic characteristics of the general population, taken from the Bureau of the Census Current Population Survey from March 1988.
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.; Standardized missing values.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: Elite Data 
 DS2: General Population Data
description: American Public Opinion and United States Foreign Policy Series
description: face-to-face interview, telephone interview
description: DS1: All persons in positions of leadership in the government, academia, business and labor, the media, religious institutions, special interest groups, and private foreign policy organizations. DS2: Adults, aged 18 years and older, living in the United States, except those persons in institutions such as prisons or hospitals. Smallest Geographic Unit: nation
description: DS1: The opinion leaders sample was designed to replicate elite samples used in previous years. For a detailed description of the subsamples, please see the "Survey Introduction and Methodology" section of the "Original ICPSR Codebook, 1996 Release". DS2: National probability sample stratified by size of community and then by geographic region.