DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04480
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #3 and Call-Back Poll, September 1996
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded September 26-October 1 and October 6,
 1996, solicited public opinion prior to and immediately following the
 first presidential debate held October 6, 1996. Respondents polled
 prior to the speech were asked to rate their level of satisfaction
 with the way things were going in the United States, and whether the
 government could have a positive impact on people's lives. Those
 respondents who were registered voters were asked about the likelihood
 that they would watch the upcoming presidential debate, what they
 thought were the most important issues for the candidates to discuss,
 whether the debate should include more than just the candidates from
 the two major political parties, and for whom respondents would vote
 if the election were held that day. Other questions asked about the
 political campaigns of President Bill Clinton and republican candidate
 Bob Dole, and the most important thing a president could do to solve
 issues such as economic problems and crime. A subset of respondents
 agreed to participate in a call-back poll, conducted immediately
 following the October 6, 1996, presidential debate. These respondents
 were asked whether they had watched or listened to the debate that
 evening, which candidate they thought won the debate, whether each
 candidate addressed the issues that mattered most to the respondent,
 whether Reform Party candidate Ross Perot should have been included in
 the debate, and whether the debate affected their vote. Information
 was also collected on whether respondents considered themselves part
 of the conservative Christian political movement, and whether they
 listened to political call-in radio shows. Demographic variables
 include sex, race, age, employment status, household income, education
 level, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political
 party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status,
 the presence of children and teenagers in the household, and whether
respondents had a child entering high school in 1996.
description: The data contain weight variables that should be used for
 analysis. Please refer to the codebook documentation for information
on weighting the call-back poll.
description: Stratified random digit dialing. 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).
description: Datasets: 
DS1: CBS News Monthly Poll #3 and Call-Back Poll, September 1996
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over
having a telephone at home.
description: telephone interview(1) The data available for download are not weighted,
 and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis. (2)
 Variables R1-R7 refer to the call-back poll fielded October 6,
 1996. (3) The original data file contained three records per case and
 was reformatted into a data file with one record per case. (4) The
 data and documentation for this study were acquired from the
 Roper Center for Public
 Opinion Research. (5) The variables AREA_CODE and EXCH_CODE were
 recoded for confidentiality. (6) Some questions were asked only of
 respondents who answered that they were registered to vote. Please
 refer to the data collection instrument for information on which
 variables were asked only of registered voters. (7) The variable
 INTERVIEW_ID was converted from character to numeric. (8) Value labels
 for unknown codes were added in variables Q5, Q6, Q7, Q8, Q21, and
Q22.