DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03299.v1
title: ABC News/Washington Post Afghanistan Attack Poll #2, October 2001
title: Version 1

description: This special topic poll, conducted October 8, 2001, was undertaken to assess respondents' reactions to and feelings about the United States military action in Afghanistan. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way President Bush was handling the response to terrorist attacks in the United States, and whether they supported United States air strikes on Afghanistan and sending a significant number of United States ground troops into that country. Respondents were asked whether they believed that the United States government was doing all it reasonably could do to try to prevent further terrorist attacks and whether they supported United States military action against other countries supporting terrorism. Those polled expressed their level of concern about the possibility of further terrorist attacks (specifically biological and chemical) in America, and how confident they were in the abilities of the federal and local governments, police, and health agencies to respond effectively to a biological or chemical attack in the United States. A battery of questions focused on the Muslim religion and its believers, including whether respondents had a good basic understanding of Islam, how they viewed this religion, whether Arabs and Muslims had positive or negative opinions about the United States and reasons for these opinions, whether they thought the terrorists who attacked the United States in September were close in their views to the mainstream teachings of Islam, and whether they knew anyone who was a Muslim. Respondents also gave their opinions on whether the United States was doing enough to improve its image among Arabs and Muslims. Another subject of this survey was the Middle East. Those polled commented on whether they had more sympathy for Israel or for the Palestinian Authority, whether the United States should increase support for Israel or decrease support for Israel and recognize Palestine as an independent nation, and what was more important at this time--United States relations with Israel or with the Arab nations. Additional questions focused on the possibility of a broader war between the United States and its allies on one side and Arabs and Muslims on the other side, the efforts of the United States to avoid a broader war, and racial profiling and social consent for racial profiling as a tool against terrorism. Background information on respondents includes age, gender, race, Hispanic origin, religion, political party affiliation, political orientation, education, and objective size of community.
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: ABC News/Washington Post Poll Series
description: The data are provided as an SPSS portable file.
This collection has not been processed by ICPSR staff. ICPSR is distributing the data and documentation for this collection in essentially the same form in which they were received. When appropriate, documentation has been converted to Portable Document Format (PDF), data files have been converted to non-platform-specific formats, and variables have been recoded to ensure respondents' anonymity.
Produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres Intersearch, Horsham, PA, 2001.