American national election study, 1988
Subtitle: pre- and post-election survey
By: principal investigators, Warren E. Miller and the National Election Studies
Series: American national election study series; ICPSR -- 9196; ICPSR (Series) -- 9196
Publisher: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor
Published: 1988
Place of publication: Ann Arbor, Mich
Language: und
Format: [computer file] :
Subjects: Elections; Public opinion; Voting; Presidential candidates; Politics and government
Description: This is the twentieth in a series of studies of American national elections. The content of the pre- and post-election surveys consists of ''core'' and new items. Core items are those questions that have been asked in previous election studies and have been determined to be central to the National Election Study (NES) program of research. New questions for the 1988 survey came from the 1987 Pilot Study, were reinstated at the urging of the NES scholarly community, or were designed to reflect topical concerns of the 1988 campaign. New topics include evaluations of the presidential primary candidates, respondent's primary vote, the budget deficit, health insurance, foreign policy, equal rights for women, the drug problem, the Reagan presidency, recall of the 1984 presidential vote, parental party identification, evaluation of Bush and Dukakis on the issues of environment and crime, the death penalty, and new system support and political efficacy items.
Notes: The American National Election Studies are national surveys carried out by the Survey Research Center (SRC) or by the Center for Political Studies (CPS) of The Institute for Social Research at The University of Michigan. 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. The samples are representative of the four major regions (Northeast, North Central, South, and West) of the coterminous United States as defined by the Census Bureau. Descriptions of the sampling procedures can be found in Leslie Kish, Survey sampling (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964) and Steven G. Heeringa, Judith H. Connor, and Doris C. Darrah, 1980 SRC national sample: design and development (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, 1986). Interviewing was conducted after the presidential election of 1948, before and after presidential elections from 1952 through 1988, and after the congressional elections of 1958, 1962, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, and 1986. Also, in 1980 data were collected at six time periods in addition to the traditional pre- and post-presidential election surveys.

Interviews ranged from one to three hours in length. Many questions are replicated across studies, although each has questions not asked in the others. The major substantive areas covered in all studies may be roughly grouped as follows: (1) Respondents' expectations about the outcome of the election, perceptions and evaluations of the major parties and candidates, and perceived importance of the election. (2) Party identification and political history of respondents and their parents. (3) Measurement of respondents' interest in politics and their political motivation. (4) Respondents' positions on issues, the strength of these positions, and respondents' perceptions of the major parties' stands and differences relating to these issues. (5) Respondents' perceptions of economic, ethnic, and religious group political orientation and feelings of closeness and trust toward these groups. (6) Respondents' assessments of the relative importance of major problems facing the country and general appraisals of the foreign and domestic state of affairs. (7) Self-reported assessments of financial situation and class identity and questions relating to economic, social, and geographical mobility.

(8) Sources of political information, degree of political interaction with family and friends, and organizational membership and activities. (9) Measures of political efficacy, conservatism versus liberalism, and trust in government. (10) Personal data yielding information on sex, race, age, education, occupation, father's occupation, ethnic background, religious affiliation, income, family composition, and region of the country in which the respondent grew up and is presently living. (11) Post-election questions on actual voting behavior and awareness of, and participation in, the campaign. For further discussion of the data, the user is referred to Warren E. Miller, Arthur H. Miller, and Edward J. Schneider. American national election studies data sourcebook, 1952-1978. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980) and John P. Robinson, Jerrold G. Rusk, and Kendra B. Head. Measures of political attitudes (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, 1968).

ICPSR data class: Class I.

Chronological coverage: 1988. Data collected: 1988.

Personal interviews.

Survey data.

United States.

National Science Foundation. SOC77-08885 and SES-8341310.

OSIRIS and Card Image data format, with SPSS Control Cards for each. Two forms were used in both the pre- and post-election surveys so that a maximum amount of content could be included. For both the pre- and post-surveys, half the sample was assigned to Form A, the other half to Form B. In particular, the lengthy section containing Reagan retrospective evaluation items was split between the two waves and the two forms in order not to make either the pre- or post-instrument unacceptably long, and to study the effects of post-election media analysis of the presidency. The other major usage of the two forms was to conduct an experiment in survey response.

Codebook available.

Part number: 1 ; part name: Pre- and Post-Election Survey (ICPSR Version) ; file structure: rectangular ; case count: 2,040 ; variable count: 1,116 ; LRECL: 1,691 ; records per case: 25.

National multistage area probability sample.

Universe: All United States citizens of voting age on or before November 8, 1988, residing in housing units other than on military reservations, in the 48 coterminous states.