DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03693.v3
title: CBS News Monthly Poll #2, April 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,
foreign policy, the situation in the Middle East, and the campaign
against terrorism, as well as their views of Secretary of State Colin
Powell, Pope John Paul II, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, and Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. A series of questions addressed the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Respondents were asked whether they
sympathized with Israel or the Palestinians, whether Israel should alter
its military presence in the occupied territories, and whether the
United States should publicly support either side. Respondents were
questioned as to whether they believed Colin Powell's trip to the Middle
East would be successful, whether the United States government has a
responsibility to establish peace in the Middle East, and whether they
believed involvement in the conflict would increase the likelihood of
terrorist attacks against America. Those polled were questioned about
the sexual abuse allegations against Catholic priests. Respondents were
asked what they believed to be the greatest problem facing the Catholic
Church, whether the child sex accusations harmed the reputation of the
Catholic Church, whether celibacy increased the likelihood of child sex
abuse, and whether they believed the Pope was aware of the abuse before
the allegations were made public. Lastly, respondents were asked whether
they believed surveillance cameras on city streets reduced crime or
invaded people's privacy, and whether they approved of the placement of
surveillance cameras on sites that are important to the country's
history. Background information on respondents includes age, gender,
race, religion, education, political party, political orientation,
marital status, number of children in the household, 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 Monthly Poll #2, April 2002
description: Adult population of the United States aged 18 and over
having a telephone 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.