DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03745.v1
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #1, February 2003
title: Version 1

description: This poll 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 George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy. A series of questions focused on the current situation in Iraq. Topics covered whether Bush had adequately explained the United States' position on Iraq, whether the United States had tried hard enough to reach a diplomatic solution, whether the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was an appropriate use of military action, who bore the burden of proof regarding possible Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction, whether United Nations approval should be sought prior to military action, whether sufficient evidence existed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and/or ties to the terrorist group Al Qaeda, and the respondent's familiarity with Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations, explaining the United States position on Iraq. Those polled were asked to assess the value of the space shuttle program, including whether an appropriate amount of money was being spent on space exploration, whether the program contributed scientific advances that benefited everyone, and whether the United States space program contributed to national pride. Respondent views were sought on the use of the Internet as a dating service, including whether the respondent or someone the respondent knew had ever used a singles Web site, gone on a date with someone they had met on the Internet, had a bad experience with Internet dating, or married someone they had met on the Internet. Their views were also sought on whether Internet dating was a good idea and whether it was a safer way to meet people than at a bar or nightclub. Background information on respondents includes age, gender, political party, political orientation, marital status, religion, education, Hispanic descent, race, computer/Internet access, whether respondents watched/listened to the January 28, 2003, State of the Union Address, and household 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: 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.
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.
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over having a telephone at home.
description: A variation of random-digit dialing 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. 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).