National election studies method comparison project, 1982
By: principal investigators, Merrill Shanks ... [et al.]
Series: American national election study series; ICPSR -- 8233; ICPSR (Series) -- 8233
Publisher: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor
Published: 1980
Place of publication: Ann Arbor, Mich
Language: und
Format: [computer file] /
Subjects: Elections, 1982; Elections; Voting; Public opinion; United States. Congress
Description: In early 1982, the National Election Studies obtained additional support from the National Science Foundation for a systematic study comparing survey data collected through traditional methods (household sampling and personal interviewing) with data collected by random digit dial (RDD) telephone sampling using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). The study took place in conjunction with the previously funded 1982 National Election Study of congressional elections. The broad purposes of the data collection were to permit the NES staff and user community to assess overall differences between the two data collection techniques in sample and measurement quality, and to carry out a series of additional methodological experiments concerned with question format, computer-assisted procedures, and survey organization. The resulting study consists of 998 complete or partial telephone interviews, all of which were conducted in the three months following the 1982 elections. Because of parallel work in the development of computer-assisted telephone interviewing at Berkeley and Michigan, the telephone sample was randomly allocated to two different interviewing sites, one operated by the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center, and one by University of California-Berkeley's Program in Computer-Assisted Survey Methods.
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). Interviewing was conducted after the presidential election of 1948, before and after Presidential elections, from 1952 through 1980, but only after the congressional elections of 1958, 1962, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1978, and 1982. 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 area covered in all studies may be roughly grouped as follows: - Respondents' expectations about the outcome of the election, perceptions and evaluations of the major parties and candidates, and perceived importance of the election. - Party identification and political history of respondents and their parents. - Measurement of respondents' interest in politics and their political motivation. - Respondents' issue positions, the strength of these positions, and respondents' perceptions of the major parties' stands and differences relating to these issues. - Respondents' perceptions of economic, ethnic, and religious group political orientation and feelings of closeness and trust toward these groups. - Respondents' assessments of the relative importance of major problems facing the country and general appraisals of the foreign and domestic state of affairs. - Self-reported assessments of financial situation and class identity and questions relating to economic, social, and geographical mobility. - Sources of political information, degree of political interaction with family and friends, and organizational membership and activities. - Measures of political efficacy, conservatism versus liberalism and trust in government.

- 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. - 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). In addition, the major papers and publications resulting from each study will be listed after its description.

ICPSR data class: Class IV.

Data collected: 1982.

United States.

National Science Foundation.