Washington Post Poll, February 2002 (ICPSR 3434)

Version Date: Jun 27, 2002

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Principal Investigator(s):
The Washington Post

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03434.v1

Version V1

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Summary

This poll 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. This poll was undertaken to assess respondents' views on current events since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Respondents were asked whether they felt things were going in the right direction in the United States or if they have gotten seriously off track, and whether President George W. Bush and the Democratic leaders of Congress were making progress on solving the nation's problems. They were questioned about whether they approved of the manner in which Congress, as a whole, and their own representative, in particular, were doing their respective jobs. Respondents were then asked to describe the state of the nation's economy and identify who or what deserved the credit/blame for this: President Bush, Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Congress, normal changes in the business cycle, the events of September 11th or former president Bill Clinton. In addition, respondents' political knowledge was tested based on whether they were aware that Donald Rumsfeld was the current Secretary of Defense, and that an education reform bill had been passed by congress and signed into law this year by President Bush. Respondents were also questioned on how closely they were attuned to the following events: the war in Afghanistan, possible new terrorist attacks on the United States, the collapse of the Texas-based energy company Enron, the 2002 winter Olympics, upcoming congressional elections, and debates on campaign finance reform and an economic stimulus package. Also, on the matter of Enron, respondents were asked who they felt bore more responsibility for the current situation, Democrats or Republicans. Regarding September 11th, respondents were asked how this affected their interest in political news, and what importance they now placed on partisan politics. Respondents were also queried about their stance on possible United States military action against Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Background information on respondents includes age, gender, political party, education, religion, voter participation history, area of residence, labor union membership, race, and household income.

Citation

The Washington Post. Washington Post Poll, February 2002. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2002-06-27. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03434.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)

2002-02

Date of Collection

2002-02-19 -- 2002-02-21

Data Collection Notes

  1. The data are provided as an SPSS portable file.

  2. Additional information about sampling, interviewing, weighting, and sampling error, may be found in the codebook.

  3. This collection has not been processed by ICPSR staff. ICPSR is distributing the data and documentation for this collection in essentially the same form in which they were received. When appropriate, documentation has been converted to Portable Document Format (PDF), data files have been converted to non-platform-specific formats, and variables have been recoded to ensure respondents' anonymity.

  4. Produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres Intersearch, Horsham, PA, 2002.

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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 at home at the time of interview.

Universe

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

Data Source

telephone interviews

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

2002-06-27

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:
  • The Washington Post. Washington Post Poll, February 2002. ICPSR03434-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2002. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03434.v1

2002-06-27 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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Notes

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