ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll, April 2009 (ICPSR 27764)

Version Date: Apr 29, 2010

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Principal Investigator(s):
ABC News; The Washington Post

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR27764.v1

Version V1

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Summary

This poll, fielded April 21-24, 2009, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President Barack Obama and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy as well as opinions on Vice President Joe Biden. Respondents were asked whether the Obama administration, the Republicans or the Democrats in Congress could be trusted to do a better job coping with the economic problems the nation faced, whether things in the country were going in the right direction, and the capacity of President Obama to understand the problems and needs of the American citizen. Respondents were also asked their opinions of the effectiveness of the economic stimulus and federal controls to prevent waste and fraud in the economic recovery, as well as the appropriateness for United States automakers to declare bankruptcy and their role in the national economy. Non-economic questions concerned the role of the United States in Afghanistan, confidence in the Obama administration in the handling of Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism, whether the United States should establish diplomatic/trade relations with Cuba, whether the Obama administration should investigate the legality of the use of torture during the previous Bush (George, W.) administration, concerns over greenhouse gases, gun control and its relationship to the level of violent crime in the United States and the legality of same-sex marriage. Additional questions asked respondents for their opinions on the effectiveness of immigration control and proposed amnesty plans for illegal immigrants, and legalizing possession of marijuana for personal use. Personal financial and economic topics addressed how concerned respondents were that they could maintain their current standard of living. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, political philosophy, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), education level, religious preference, employment status, household income, and whether respondents considered themselves to be a born-again Christian.

Citation

ABC News, and The Washington Post. ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll, April 2009. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-04-29. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR27764.v1

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2009-04

Date of Collection

2009-04-21 -- 2009-04-24

Data Collection Notes

  1. The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.

  2. The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, NIELSMKT, BLOCKCNT, STATE, CONGDIST, and ZIP were converted from character variables to numeric.

  3. To preserve respondent confidentiality, codes for the variables FIPS (FIPS County) and ZIP (ZIP Code) have been replaced with blank codes.

  4. System-missing values were recoded to -1.

  5. The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis.

  6. Value labels for unknown codes were added in variables MSA, CSA, CBSA, and METRODIV.

  7. The data collection was produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres of Horsham, PA. Original reports using these data may be found via the ABC News Polling Unit Web site and via the Washington Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site.
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Sample

Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within households, the respondent selected was the youngest adult living in the household who was home at the time of the interview. Please refer to the codebook documentation for more information on sampling.

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

2010-04-29

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, and The Washington Post. ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll, April 2009. ICPSR27764-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-04-29. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR27764.v1

2010-04-29 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:

  • Standardized missing values.
  • Created online analysis version with question text.
  • Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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Weight

The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The weights were derived using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Until 2008 ABC News used a cell-based weighting system in which respondents were classified into one of 48 or 32 cells (depending on sample size) based on their age, race, sex, and education; weights were assigned so the proportion in each cell matched the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey. To achieve greater consistency and reduce the chance of large weights, ABC News in 2007 tested and evaluated iterative weighting, commonly known as raking or rim weighting, in which the sample is weighted sequentially to Census targets one variable at a time, continuing until the optimum distribution across variables (again, age, race, sex, and education) is achieved. ABC News adopted rim weighting in January 2008. Weights are capped at lows of 0.2 and highs of 6.

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Notes