DOI: 10.3886/icpsr33961.v1
title: CBS News/New York Times National Survey, April #1, 2011
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded April 15 - April 20, 2011, 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 Barack Obama was handling his job as president, the economy, the budget deficit, foreign policy, and the situation in Libya. Respondents were also asked whether they approved of the way the United States Congress was handling its job and whether they approved of the way Republicans in the United States Congress were handling the federal budget deficit. Opinions were sought on the severity of the country's budget deficit, how respondents would balance the federal budget, and whether respondents felt that Obama and the Republicans compromised on the issues of the budget deficit and the debt limit. Multiple questions were asked regarding the Republican Party and its potential candidates for the 2012 presidential election. Respondents were asked how favorably they viewed the candidates as well as their opinion about the goals and direction of the Republican Party. A significant portion of the survey focused on the rising costs of Medicare. Respondents were asked their opinion of the Medicare program, how they would plan to pay for the increasing costs of Medicare in the future and the amount of benefits they felt Medicare recipients should receive. Additional questions focused on respondent's opinion of the government's responsibility to provide health services, whether Medicare was worth the cost to taxpayers and possible changes to Medicare in order to reduce the federal deficit. Additional topics covered were the Tea Party movement, whether Obama is a United States citizen, the British Royal Family, Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding, and the idea of an American Royal Family. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, household income, marital status, religious preference, political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status, and whether 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: 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
description: Persons aged 18 years and older living in households with telephones in the United States. Smallest Geographic Unit: state
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).