Washington Post/Harvard University/Kaiser Family Foundation Entitlement Poll, March 1997 (ICPSR 2178)
Version Date: Apr 16, 2008 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
The Washington Post;
Harvard University;
Kaiser Family Foundation
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02178.v2
Version V2
Summary View help for Summary
This special topic poll, fielded March 13-23, 1997, is part of a continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. The focus of this data collection was to assess respondents' views on Social Security, Medicare, entitlement programs, and retirement. Respondents were asked whether the country was moving in the right direction, and gave their opinion on the condition of the national economy. Respondents were asked to assess their knowledge of the Social Security program, including who is eligible to receive the benefits, what limits, if any, exist in the distribution of those benefits, the use of Social Security payroll taxes, the current state of the program, and the amount of benefits received by the average Social Security recipient. Similar questions were raised regarding Medicare, including the differences between it and Medicaid, the origin of Medicare funds, the extent of Medicare coverage, and the future of the Medicare trust fund. Respondents were asked about their retirement planning, such as their saving patterns, potential sources of income during their retirement, private pensions and 401K plans, and the amount of money that they felt was necessary to live as a retired person. Information was also collected on respondents' retirement status and their receipt of Medicare and Social Security benefits. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, ethnicity, education level, household income, political party affiliation, and political philosophy.
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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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(1) The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis. (2) The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis. (3) To protect respondent confidentiality, respondent names were removed from the public use data file. (4) Value labels for unknown codes were added in RECODED_AGE, Q26, Q901, and Q908. (5) The original data file contained five records per case and was reformatted into a data file with one record per case.
Sample View help for 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 View help for Universe
Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
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HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
1998-07-28
Version History View help for Version History
- The Washington Post/Harvard University/Kaiser Family Foundation. WASHINGTON POST/HARVARD UNIVERSITY/KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION ENTITLEMENT POLL, MARCH 1997. ICPSR02178-v2. Radnor, PA: Chilton Research Services [producer], 1997. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-04-16. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02178.v2
2008-04-16 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. Question text has been added to the codebook, and the data collection instrument has been taken out of the codebook and made into its own file. Harvard University and Kaiser Family Foundation have been added as principal investigators. Value labels for unknown codes were added in RECODED_AGE, Q26,and Q901.
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.
Weight View help for 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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These data are freely available to data users at ICPSR member institutions. The curation and dissemination of this study are provided by the institutional members of ICPSR. How do I access ICPSR data if I am not at a member institution?