The 1997 Pilot Study was conducted between September 5 and October 1, 1997. In addition, rosters of items, such as the thermometer, were randomized in administration to minimize order effects. They are based on multistage representative cross-section samples of citizens of voting age, living in private households. Each study contains information from interviews conducted with 1,000 to 2,000 respondents. Interviewing is conducted before and after presidential elections and after occasional congressional elections.
Interviews range from one to three hours in length.
Many questions are replicated across studies, although each has questions not asked in the others. The balance of cases consisted of cases from two previous waves, the 1992 and 1994 panel cases for which telephone numbers were available and a post-election interview was conducted in 1996. Each of these panel components was represented proportionally in the initial sample for 1997. The initial sample consisted of 724 respondents from 1996, and 551 of these respondents completed an interview in 1997. The number of refusals was 22.