DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03432
title: ABC News/Washington Post Catholic Church in Crisis Poll, March 2002
title: Archival Version

description: This special topic poll was designed to ascertain the
 feelings and opinions respondents surveyed about the recent scandals
 within the Catholic Church concerning the sexual abuse of children by
 Catholic priests. Those surveyed were asked to describe their views
 toward the Catholic Church, specifically whether they endorsed the
 Roman Catholic Church policies that priests cannot get married and
 that women cannot become priests, whether they agreed with the way the
 Catholic Church has dealt with the issue of sexual abuse of children
 by Catholic priests, whether such abuse is common, whether the
 Catholic Church was taking the proper actions to deal with the issue,
 whether this issue had hurt the overall reputation of the Catholic
 Church in their eyes, and if so, by how much. Respondents were asked
 if they believed Catholic priests were more likely than other men to
 sexually abuse children, and if the following policies and practices
 were part of the problem: not allowing priests to marry, not allowing
 women to be priests, transferring priests accused of sexual abuse to
 another parish, not calling the police when a priest was accused of
 sexual abuse, being reluctant to dismiss priests because of a shortage
 of priests, or the lack of Vatican oversight of the Catholic Church in
 the United States. Persons queried were asked whether they approved of
 transferring a priest who had been accused of sexually abusing a child
 to another parish without telling parishioners about the accusation,
 whether the Church should inform parishioners and/or the police about
 such charges, and whether the Church should be required to do this by
 law. Respondents were then questioned about their overall opinions on
 how the Church had handled the issue, as well as their knowledge of
 instances in which a Catholic priest had been accused of sexually
 abusing children in their community, or instances in which friends or
 relatives had been abused by a Catholic priest. Persons of the
 Catholic faith were asked how satisfied they were with the leadership
 provided by their parish priest or priests, their bishop, and the
 Pope, whether the church effectively involved lay people in deciding
 church policies, and whether they approved of the way their parish
 priest or priests, their bishop, and the national leaders of the
 Catholic Church had handled the issue of sexual abuse of children by
 priests. Catholic respondents were also asked whether their diocese
 should publicly report the amount of money paid to settle lawsuits
 against priests accused of sexually abusing children, if their diocese
 should publicly release the names of priests who had been accused of
 sexually abusing children, whether the issue of sexual abuse of
 children by priests had caused them to alter the amount of money they
 gave to the Church in donations, if this issue had caused them to
 reexamine their personal faith, if they were aware of any priests in
 their own parish that have been accused of sexually abusing children,
 whether there was a chance that they would leave the Roman Catholic
 Church, how likely they were to leave, and if their leaving was
 motivated in some way by the issue of sexual abuse by
 priests. Non-Catholic persons were asked if they were aware of any
 clergy within their religious congregation that had been accused of
 sexually abusing children. Additionally, all persons queried were
 asked whether they approved of the way President George W. Bush was
 handling his job. Background information on respondents includes age,
 gender, education, religion, frequency of attendance at religious
services, race, and Hispanic origin.
description: Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within 
 households, the respondent selected was the adult living in the 
 household who last had a birthday and who was at home at the time of 
interview.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News/Washington Post Catholic Church in Crisis Poll, March 2002
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with 
telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: (1) The data are provided as an SPSS portable file.
 (2) Additional information about sampling, interviewing, weighting,
 and sampling error may be found in the codebook. (3) 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. (4) The codebook is provided
 by ICPSR 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 on the ICPSR
Web site.