DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34467
title: CBS News/New York Times National Poll, August #1, 2011
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, fielded August 2011, and the first of four, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on a range of political and social issues. Respondents were asked how well Barack Obama was handling the presidency, the economy, and whether he showed strong leadership qualities during the debt ceiling negotiations. Respondents were also asked for their opinions on how the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress have handled negotiations on the debt ceiling, whether members of Congress deserve re-election, and how they felt about the ability of Congress to address issues affecting the country. Further information was collected regarding the debt ceiling negotiations, including whether respondents were relieved that a debt ceiling agreement had been reached, whether respondents felt the measures in the debt ceiling agreement would improve the economy, and whether the negotiations had impacted the image of the United States throughout the world. Additional topics included John Boehner's job performance, the national economy, raising taxes, whether the government should prioritize spending cuts vs. job creation, the Tea Party movement, and the amount of influence the Tea Party movement has within the Republican Party. 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: 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).