DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03747.v2
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #3, February 2003
title: Version 2

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, the economy, and the situation with Iraq, as well as their views of the United Nations and its handling of the situation with Iraq. Those queried were asked which of the following issues should receive the most Congressional attention in the coming year: fighting the war on terror, improving the economy, or dealing with Iraq. A series of questions addressed United States foreign relations, including whether world leaders respected Bush and whether their perceptions affected the United States' ability to accomplish foreign policy objectives. Respondents were asked whether they considered Canada, France, and Russia to be allies or enemies of the United States, and how they viewed the United States' relations with European allies and with the rest of the world. Respondents' familiarity with and understanding of possible United States military action against Iraq was assessed. Questions focused on whether the Bush administration was open to non-militaristic options, whether Congress had asked enough questions of the administration, whether military action should be taken without the support of the allies and/or of United Nations approval, whether United Nations weapons inspectors should be given more time, and whether the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was an appropriate use of military action. In the event of war, respondents were asked whether the threat of terrorism against the United States would increase, whether the United States should help pay the cost of rebuilding Iraq after the war, and whether the United States should maintain peacekeeping troops in Iraq. Those polled were asked to assess the threat of terrorism, including whether the Bush administration's foreign policy made the United States a more likely target, the likelihood of a terrorist attack against the United States in the next few months, and whether the respondent was personally concerned about being a victim of terrorism. Questions sought respondent views on whether Americans who opposed a war with Iraq should be permitted to hold protest marches and whether the views of American and worldwide protestors should be taken into account by the Bush administration when making foreign policy decisions. An additional question asked respondents if they were bothered whenever Bush spoke publicly about his religious beliefs. Background information on respondents includes age, gender, voter registration and participation history, political party, political orientation, marital status, religion, education, Hispanic descent, race, children in household, 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).