DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04666
title: ABC News/USA Today/KFF Poll, September 2006
title: Archival Version

description: This poll, conducted September 7-12, 2006, is part of a
 continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public opinion on
 various political and social issues. Respondents were asked which
 issues would be most important in their vote for Congress later that
 year, which party they trusted more to handle health care issues, how
 satisfactory the quality and total cost of health care was, and
 whether or not the number of Americans without insurance was a
 critical problem. Information was collected on the status of the
 respondents' own health insurance, including whether they were insured
 or not, what type of insurance they had, and how long they had been
 uninsured. Views were sought on whether health care premiums had been
 rising, why they were rising, how it had affected their household, and
 how job loss would affect the status and cost of health insurance. A
 series of questions asked whether new treatments should always be
 covered, whether efforts should go toward reducing health care costs
 or reducing the number of Americans without insurance, and whether
 there should be a universal health insurance program. The respondents
 rated the effectiveness of the current health insurance system, and
 they were asked under what conditions a universal health insurance
 program would be supported. They were also asked their opinions on
 whether or not employers should be obligated to provide coverage, and
 whether tax breaks should be offered to companies. Additional topics
 addressed terminally ill patients and the expense of keeping them
 alive. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level,
 household income, political party affiliation, political philosophy,
employment status, and marital status.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be
 used in analyzing the data. The data were weighted using demographic
 information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling
 deviations from population values. Respondents customarily were
 classified into one of 48 cells based on age, race, sex, and
 education. Weights were assigned so the proportion in each of these
 48 cells matched the actual population proportion according to the
Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey.
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 home at the time of the
interview.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News/USA Today/KFF Poll, September 2006
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with
telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: telephone interview(1) The data available for download are not weighted,
 and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis. (2) Original
 reports using these data may be found via the
 ABC News Polling
 Unit Web site. (3) System-missing values were recoded to -1. (4)
 The FIPS and ZIP variables were recoded for confidentiality. (5)
 Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks. (6)
 Value labels for unknown/missing codes were added in the MSA,
 METRODIV, CSA, and CBSA variables. (7) The CASEID variable was created
 for use with online analysis. (8) The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN,
 PCTHISP, CONGDIST, BLOCKCNT, MSAFLAG, STCODE, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV,
 ZIP, and NIELSMKT were converted from character to numeric. (9)
 According to the data collection instrument, code 3 in the variable
 Q909 also included respondents who answered that they had attended a
technical school.