DOI: 10.3886/icpsr31568.v1
title: CBS News/Vanity Fair Monthly Poll, March 2010
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded March 29th through April 2nd, 2010, is a 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. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way that Barack Obama was handling his job as president, the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care, and the threat of terrorism. Information was collected on whether respondents approved of the way Congress was handling its job, how they rated the condition of the national economy, whether they approved of and understood the new health care reform bill, whether they thought that the health care reform bill would personally effect them, whether health care reform would improve the quality of health care, whether it would increase the federal budget deficit, and whether they thought that the new health insurance reforms would increase consumer protection against health insurance companies. Respondents were also asked whether they thought that members of Congress and Americans today had more civility in debating the issues than they did ten years ago, whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin, and Pope Benedict. Respondents were queried on whether they thought that the Pope and the Vatican did a good job or poor job in handling the charges of sexual abuse of children by priests, whether they thought that international terrorism or domestic terrorism was a more serious threat to Americans, whether they were going to participate in the 2010 Census, whether they felt they paid their fair share of taxes, and whether they filed their 2009 income taxes. Respondents were asked whether they thought the condition of the environment for the next generation would be better, worse, or about the same as it was, how much they have heard about the iPad, whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Steve Jobs, whether they thought that marijuana should be legal, whether they would go into space if offered a free trip, and which news source they considered to be the most trustworthy. Finally, respondents were asked how concerned they were that they or someone in their household might be out of work in the next 12 months, whether they were a supporter of the Tea Party movement, whether they had some form of health insurance, and how often they attended religious services. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, marital status, education level, household income, religious preference, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, political philosophy, and voter registration status.
description: The data contain weight variables 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: Performed consistency checks.; Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
description: telephone interview 
The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.
The CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.
Truncated value labels in variables EDUC and Q51 were corrected.
This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.
description: Persons aged 18 years and older living in households with telephones in the United States.
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).