ABC News Media Poll, January 1997 (ICPSR 2171)

Version Date: Aug 5, 2008

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Principal Investigator(s):
ABC News

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02171.v3

Version V3

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Summary

This special topic poll, conducted January 6-7, 1997, sought respondents' views on national and local media practices. Respondents were asked to rate the ethics and honesty of television and print news media, as well as of politicians, corporations, average Americans, and the Clinton Administration. Those polled were asked whether they approved of the way national network television and local television stations reported the news, and whether the news media cared more about the accuracy of a story or being the first to report it. Views were also sought on the media's treatment of politicians, various socioeconomic classes, religious and political groups, celebrities, the military, the police, the government, and corporations. Respondents also rated their enjoyment of news reports on celebrities and politicians, and commented on the relevance of news stories to their lives. Additional topics covered the influence of network television news on viewers, the benefits and drawbacks of investigative news reporting, the media's respect or disrespect of privacy, the power of the media to limit political corruption and unfair business practices, and how often respondents watched television evening news programs. Demographic variables included sex, race, age, education level, household income, employment status, political party affiliation, political philosophy, and type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural).

Citation

ABC News. ABC News Media Poll, January 1997. [distributor], 2008-08-05. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02171.v3

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

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Time Period(s)

1997-01

Date of Collection

1997-01-06 -- 1997-01-07

Data Collection Notes

  1. (1) The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis. (2) Original reports using these data may be found via the ABC News Polling Unit Web site. (3) The meaning of the variable SELECTB is unknown and may be associated with the sampling method of selecting a respondent based on the adult living in the household who last had a birthday. (4) According to the data collection instrument, code 3 in the variable EDUC also includes respondents who answered that they had attended a technical college. (5) The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis. (6) To protect respondent confidentiality, respondent names were removed from the public use data file. (7) The original data file contained four records per case and was reformatted into a data file with one record per case.
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Sample

Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within households, the respondent selected was the adult living in the household who last had a birthday and who was home at the time of the interview.

Universe

Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.

Unit(s) of Observation

individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

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Original Release Date

1998-07-28

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • ABC News. ABC NEWS MEDIA POLL, JANUARY 1997. ICPSR02171-v3. Radnor, PA: Chilton Research Services [producer], 1997. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-08-05. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02171.v3

2008-08-05 The location of the weight variable was corrected, and SAS, SPSS, and Stata setup files, and SAS and Stata supplemental files have been revised accordingly. Also, the variable AGE was removed from the dataset since it was not applicable to this poll.

2007-02-27 SAS, SPSS, and Stata setup files, and SAS and Stata supplemental files have been added to this data collection. Respondent names were removed from the data file and the CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis. START.DATE = 0001

1998-07-28 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 online analysis version with question text.
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Weight

The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. This poll consists of "standard" national representative samples of the adult population with sample balancing of sex, race, age, and education.

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Notes