DOI: 10.3886/icpsr30407.v1
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll, December 2009
title: Version 1

description: This poll, fielded December 4-8, 2009, 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, job creation, the economy, the situation in Afghanistan, and health care. Several questions addressed the economy and included questions that asked for respondents' opinions on the condition of the economy, the recession, who they thought was to blame for the current high employment rate in the United States, whether they thought Republicans or Democrats would create new jobs, and whether the government's stimulus package made the economy better or created new jobs. Respondents were asked about their personal financial situation, their rating of their household's financial situation, whether they thought their financial situation was getting better, what worried them the most about their finances, whether they had made cutbacks in their day-to-day spending, how their family had been affected by the recession, and whether they discussed the financial changes with their children. Information was collected on respondents' employment status. Unemployed respondents were asked how long they had been out of work and seeking employment, how long they expected it to take to find employment, whether they were laid off, whether they were offered a severance package with their last employer, what was most effective in finding leads for new jobs, and whether they had relocated, considered changing their career, or pursued job re-training programs to increase their chances of finding employment. Respondents were asked how confident they were that they would find a job with the same income and benefits as their last job, whether they were receiving unemployment benefits, and whether they took any money from their savings account, borrowed money from family or friends, increased the household's credit card debt, cut back on vacations or doctors visits, or received food stamps as result of being unemployed. Respondents were also asked whether the following things occurred as a result of them being unemployed: positive experiences, increase in volunteer work or religious service attendance, increased stress levels or exercise time, threatened with foreclosure, had more arguments with family, emotional or mental health issues, or had trouble sleeping. Other topics covered included global warming, health insurance plans, health care reform, job security, and the war in Afghanistan. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, education level, household income, military service, religious preference, reported social class, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration status, and whether respondents thought of themselves as born again Christians.
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: Performed consistency checks.; Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Standardized missing values.; 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.
A truncated value label in variable EDUC was corrected.
This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.
description: Persons aged 18 years and older 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).