DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02846.v1
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #2, August 1999
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded August 15, 1999, is 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 to give their opinions of President Bill Clinton and the United States Congress. They were also asked to recall the April 1999 high school shooting in Colorado, as well as the recent office shootings in Georgia and Alabama, and the previous week's shooting at a Los Angeles, California, community center and day camp. Their views were sought on the reasons behind those shootings and whether the incidents could have been prevented. A series of questions addressed the issue of gun ownership and gun control in the United States, including the depth of the Second Amendment. On the topic of gun control, respondents were asked whether they believed that regulations should be stricter, including requiring gun manufacturers to put trigger locks/safety devices on guns, extending the waiting period for background checks, requiring a three-day waiting period between when a gun is bought and when it is sold, and requiring gun owners to register each firearm with the government. Those queried were asked whether stricter laws would reduce violent crime. Additional questions addressed respondents' views regarding bans on assault weapons and all handguns, permitting individuals to carry concealed weapons, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and whether Congress would enact stricter gun control laws during 1999. Background information on respondents includes age, sex, race, education, religion, voter registration and participation history, political party, political orientation, Hispanic descent, marital status, gun ownership, computer access, stock market investments, age of children in household, and family income.
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..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: CBS News/New York Times Poll Series
description: (1) 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, hardcopy documentation has been converted to machine-readable form and variables have been recoded to ensure respondents' anonymity. (2) The codebook is provided as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided through the ICPSR Website on the Internet.
The ASCII data file may have been replaced if the previous version was formatted with multiple records per case. A frequency file, which contains the authoritative column locations, has been added to the collection.