DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34470
title: CBS News/New York Times/60 Minutes/Vanity Fair National Poll, August #4, 2011
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, the last of four fielded August 2011, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on a range of political and social issues. This poll primarily featured questions related to acts of international terrorism perpetrated within the United States. Respondents were asked whether they felt the United States had changed as a result of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, whether they felt the country was as patriotic and united as it was immediately following the attacks, and whether Americans would have to live with the threat of terrorism indefinitely. Respondents were also asked to gauge the likelihood of an imminent attack, whether they felt safe from the threat of terrorism, and whether the threat of a future terrorist attack is higher in New York City compared to other American cities. Respondents were asked whether they felt the federal government had done enough to prevent future attacks, whether the government had gone too far in restricting civil liberties in its fight against terrorism, and whether they would be willing to allow government agencies to monitor telephone calls and emails of suspicious persons and those of the general public. Furthermore, respondents were asked whether security initiatives implemented following the terrorist attacks had enhanced public safety at airports, bridges, tunnels, subways, and nuclear power plants. Opinions were also collected on whether United States military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq had decreased the threat of terrorism, whether the United States was winning the war on terrorism, and whether the killing of Osama bin Laden had provided a sense of closure and increased safety. Further information was collected regarding respondents feelings toward Muslims following the September 11th attacks, whether respondents believed Muslims were being unfairly singled out within society, and whether they believed Muslims and Arab Americans were more sympathetic to terrorists than other American citizens. Additional questions fielded for the 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair portion of the poll solicited opinions on United States relations with Russia, Yemen, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The poll also featured a number of questions on American popular culture that were unrelated to the subject of terrorism. Demographic information included sex, age, race, marital status, education level, employment status, household income, religious preference, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, political philosophy, number of phones, voter registration status, whether respondents were members of the Tea Party movement, and whether the respondents thought of themselves as born-again Christians.
description: The data contain a weight variable that should be used in analyzing the data. According to the CBS News Web site, the data were weighted to match United States Census Bureau breakdowns on age, sex, race, education, and region of the country. The data were also adjusted for the fact that people who share a telephone with others have less chance to be contacted than people who live alone and have their own telephones, and that households with more than one telephone number have more chances to be called than households with only one telephone number.
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: Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
description: telephone interview
description: Persons aged 18 years or older living in households with telephones within the United States. Smallest Geographic Unit: congressional district
description: A variation of random-digit dialing (RDD) 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. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. 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).