Summary
This poll, conducted September 7-12, 2006, is part of a continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public opinion on various political and social issues. Respondents were asked which issues would be most important in their vote for Congress later that year, which party they trusted more to handle health care issues, how satisfactory the quality and total cost of health care was, and whether or not the number of Americans without insurance was a critical problem. Information was collected on the status of the respondents' own health insurance, including whether they were insured or not, what type of insurance they had, and how long they had been uninsured. Views were sought on whether health care premiums had been rising, why they were rising, how it had affected their household, and how job loss would affect the status and cost of health insurance. A series of questions asked whether new treatments should always be covered, whether efforts should go toward reducing health care costs or reducing the number of Americans without insurance, and whether there should be a universal health insurance program. The respondents rated the effectiveness of the current health insurance system, and they were asked under what conditions a universal health insurance program would be supported. They were also asked their opinions on whether or not employers should be obligated to provide coverage, and whether tax breaks should be offered to companies. Additional topics addressed terminally ill patients and the expense of keeping them alive. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, household income, political party affiliation, political philosophy, employment status, and marital status.
Citation
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Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage
Time Period(s)
2006-09
Date of Collection
2006-09-07 -- 2006-09-12
Data Collection Notes
(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) System-missing values were recoded to -1. (4) The FIPS and ZIP variables were recoded for confidentiality. (5) Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks. (6) Value labels for unknown/missing codes were added in the MSA, METRODIV, CSA, and CBSA variables. (7) The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis. (8) The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, CONGDIST, BLOCKCNT, MSAFLAG, STCODE, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, ZIP, and NIELSMKT were converted from character to numeric. (9) According to the data collection instrument, code 3 in the variable Q909 also included respondents who answered that they had attended a technical school.
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
survey data
Mode of Data Collection
telephone interview
Original Release Date
2007-10-30
Version Date
2007-10-30
Version History
2007-10-30 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
The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The data were weighted using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Respondents customarily were classified into one of 48 cells based on age, race, sex, and education. Weights were assigned so the proportion in each of these 48 cells matched the actual population proportion according to the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey.
Notes
Data in this collection are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions.
This study is provided by ICPSR. ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.