DOI: 10.3886/icpsr30403.v1
title: CBS News/Vanity Fair Monthly Poll, October 2009
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded October 5-7, 2009, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way United States President Barack Obama was handling the presidency and issues such as the economy, foreign policy, health care, and the situations with Afghanistan and Iran. Opinions were solicited about the most important problem facing the country, the condition of the economy, and the way United States Congress was handling its job. Respondent's views about health care were sought and included their opinions about whether they believed the nation's health care system worked well, whether they approved of the way Democrats and Republicans in Congress were handling health care reform, their opinions of the tone of the health care debate, whether they thought health care reform would help or hurt them personally, and the likelihood Congress would pass and Obama would sign the health care reform bill into law by the end of 2009. Respondents were also asked several other questions about health care, including whether they favored the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan, whether they thought Democrats and Republicans were serious about reforming the health care system, and who the Democrats and Republicans were trying to help more in their health care reform proposals. Information was collected on the financial situation of the respondent's household, whether they had health insurance coverage, and the source of their insurance coverage. Additional topics addressed abortion, the war in Afghanistan, Iran's threat to the United States, opinions of cellular phones usage while driving, the swine flu, job security, assisted suicide, steroid use in professional sports, marijuana and prostitution legalization, the social networking Internet site Facebook, and the most useful technological advances of the past. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, marital status, household income, employment status, perceived social class, political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status and participation history, religious preference, the presence of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 in the household, whether respondents had children under the age of 18 years, and whether they considered themselves to be a born-again Christian.
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: Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Created online analysis version with question text.; 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 Q2, Q65, Q71, and EDUC were corrected.
This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.
description: Persons aged 18 years and over 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).