DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03460.v3
title: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #3, January 2002
title: Version 3

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, the campaign against terror, foreign policy, the economy,
and the general direction of the country, as well as their views of
Vice President Dick Cheney, Congress, and Senate majority leader Tom
Daschle. Respondents were asked for their opinions of the most
important issue facing the country, the condition of the economy and
whether it was changing, how much they trusted the government, what
size government was ideal, whether Bush would compromise with
Democrats in Congress to get things done, whether Democrats would
compromise with Bush, whether either of them should compromise, and
which one would more likely balance the budget. Respondents' opinions
were probed regarding the Republican party, the Democratic party, and
which was more likely to ensure prosperity, improve education,
properly handle Social Security, ensure a strong military, ensure fair
taxes, improve the health care system, protect the environment,
balance the federal budget, deal with terrorism, and properly spend
taxpayer money. Respondents were then asked about changes needed to
the health care system, the importance of reducing prescription drug
costs for the elderly, the importance of protecting the environment,
how much Bush really controlled his administration, how respondents
viewed his political philosophy and leadership qualities, their
confidence in his abilities to make good decisions about the economy,
how much he cared about people like them, which social class was
favored by his administration, and how much big business influenced
the Bush administration and Congress. Opinions were elicited about the
state of the federal budget, how the recent tax cuts affected the
economy, how fair the tax cuts were, whether the tax cuts were the
best use of the surplus, whether tax cuts were worth the risk of a
budget deficit, why a deficit was projected, whether a deficit was a
good or bad thing, whether the war on terrorism was hurting domestic
programs, whether tax cuts were hurting domestic programs, whether a
candidate that advocated a balanced budget or tax cuts was preferred,
and the bankruptcy of the energy trading Enron
Corporation. Respondents were queried about who they thought had more
seats in the House of Representatives, whether it mattered which
political party controlled Congress, whether it was right to attack
Afghanistan and countries hiding terrorists, how confident respondents
were in the United States government's ability to capture terrorist
Osama Bin Laden, the status of the war in Afghanistan, and the
likelihood of another terrorist attack in the United
States. Additional topics covered the state of respondents' personal
finances, whether they would watch the January 29, 2002, State of the
Union Address, and their voting intentions in the 2002 congressional
elections. Background information on respondents includes gender,
marital status, political party, political orientation, voter
registration and participation history, children in household,
religion, education, age, race, Hispanic origin, and household
income.
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]).
description: Datasets: 
DS1: CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #3, January 2002
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over
having telephones at home.
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.