DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04243.v1
title: Transatlantic Trends Survey, 2004
title: Version 1

description: The Transatlantic Trends Survey, conducted June 6-26, 2004, was designed to assess respondents' opinions on their own and other countries' involvement in world affairs and events. The survey was administered to a sample of the population, 18 years and older, in France, Germany, Great Britain (with the exception of Northern Ireland), Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, and the United States. Respondents were asked to give their opinions on the state of relations between the United States and the European Union (EU) particularly as they relate to issues of leadership and cooperation with respect to the War in Iraq, the larger war against international terrorism, and international security. Respondents were asked whether they preferred strong American leadership or a more dominant leadership role for the EU and whether they thought these issues had worked to draw the United States and the EU closer or distance them further. Respondents were also asked to evaluate the foreign policy decisions implemented by American president, George W. Bush. Respondents were asked what effects they thought the War in Iraq was having on terrorism and if the war had been worth it or not. Respondents were also asked how they would feel if their country was to withdraw troops or if withdrawn troops were to be sent back to Iraq. The survey then asked respondents for their opinion, more generally, on the use of military force and under what circumstances they would favor military intervention. The survey also sought to decipher whether respondents approved of unilateral military action or only if military action was sanctioned by their countries' allies, NATO, or the United Nations (UN). The survey also sought the respondents' opinions on a wide variety of other issues such as immigration, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the Arab/Israeli conflict, Islamic fundamentalism, the international role of the UN, and the advantages and disadvantages to Turkey's admittance into the European Union. The survey also sought to obtain information regarding the respondents' political tendencies and party preferences. Finally, the survey attempted to identify the issues most important to the respondents. The data also includes several demographic variables that captured information regarding the respondents' sex, age, level of education, occupation, household size, region, and ethnicity (United States only).
description: The weighting system used is the raking ratio technique, a common technique used in sample surveys for improving the precision and reducing the bias of estimators. It uses iterative proportional fitting. In practice, for each of the variables of interest, a new variable is computed, which accounts for the different proportions in sample and in population. This process is iterated until the difference between the population value and the sample value is sufficiently small, usually two or three times. In this case, raking ratio adjustment is made using the variables age, education, gender and population. The variable VAR134 contains the weight calculated using the variables age, education and gender, in order. Var135 contains the weight calculated as in VAR134, with the exception of US where race was also used. The variable VAR136 contains a weight calculated for each country, accounting for the proportion of the sample size on the population of the country.
description: Response Rates: The overall response rate was 24 percent (11020/46781). By country, the response rates were as follow: Germany, 54 percent (1001/1853), Spain, 14 percent (1000/7057), France, 29 percent (1006/3431), Italy, 18 percent (1002/5553), Netherlands, 26 percent (1002/3851), Portugal, 36 percent (1003/2748), Great Britain, 22 percent (1000/4583), Poland, 29 percent (1000/3459), Slovakia, 80 percent (1000/1244), Turkey, 57 percent (1006/1764), and the United States, 9 percent (1000/11238)
description: Random-digit dialing (RDD) was used.
description: Datasets: DS1: Transatlantic Trends Survey, 2004
description: Population aged 18 and older.
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI); face-to-face interviewRelated information can be found at Transatlantic Trends.Due to problems displaying characters from certain foreign languages (Polish, Slovak, and Turkish) the value labels that appear in the data for certain variables (VAR118, VAR119, and VAR120) are only available in their English equivalents. The complete value labels in both English and their respective, original languages can be found in the questionnaire section of the codebook.Additional information on the method of cataloging regions of EU member states, used to create VAR128, can be found at: Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS).