Showing 1 – 7 of 7 results.
Curated
ABC News/Washington Post Poindexter Testimony Poll #1, July 1987 (ICPSR 8894)
Released/updated on: 2008-07-24
Geographic coverage: United States
Admiral John Poindexter's testimony before the congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair was the subject of this poll. Respondents were asked if they thought Poindexter was telling the truth, withholding information, and/or covering up for President Reagan, whether they approved of Poindexter's actions, and if they thought he should be criminally prosecuted. Other questions addressed the issues of aid to the Nicaraguan contras, Reagan's involvement in the affair and if he participated in an attempt to cover up the facts, and Oliver North's actions and testimony. Demographic characteristics of respondents are included.
Curated
ABC News/Washington Post Poindexter Testimony Poll #2, July 1987 (ICPSR 8893)
Released/updated on: 2008-10-31
Geographic coverage: United States
This survey focused on the testimony of Admiral John Poindexter before the congressional committee investigating the Iran-contra affair. Respondents were asked if they thought Poindexter was telling the truth, withholding information, and/or covering up for President Reagan. They also were asked whether they approved of Poindexter's actions, whether he should be prosecuted, and whether Reagan should pardon him. Other questions addressed the issues of aid to the Nicaraguan contras, Reagan's role in the affair and when he learned of the transfer of money, Oliver North's actions and testimony, and the job being done by the investigating committee. Demographic characteristics of respondents are included.
Curated
Congressional Attitudes Toward Congressional Organization (ICPSR 7001)
Released/updated on: 2006-01-18
Geographic coverage: United States
This data collection contains information on the opinions of United States congressmen and women on their roles in Congress, the roles and functions of Congress, congressional organizations and procedures, and the problems and effectiveness of Congress. Three general types of respondents were interviewed: general, leader, and top leader respondents. Respondents were asked about their position on various proposals for congressional reorganization, such as the use of electronic voting devices, four-year terms of office, and year-long congressional sessions, and their opinions on the likelihood of these proposals being adopted. Other items probed their views on issues such as the protection of minority interests, party bloc vote, moral-based decisions, rule of the majority, equality of Congress and the Executive branch, party compromise, degree of influence of lobbyists, and pressing congressional problems. Demographic items specify age, occupation, education, previous political experience, political party affiliation, length of service in Congress, congressional leadership position, ranks, and committee membership and functions, as well as voting records, constituency characteristics by region and district, percentage of total party unity votes, conservative coalition support, and bipartisan support.
Curated
Partially restricted
Simple Crosstabs
Congressmen's Voting Decisions, 1969 (ICPSR 33301)
Released/updated on: 2014-04-16
Geographic coverage: District of Columbia, United States
The core of this data collection is a set of interviews with a stratified random sample of members of the House conducted during the first session of the Ninety-First Congress in 1969. Rather than asking respondents in general about how they make decisions, the interviews concentrated on some specific vote or votes that were currently or very recently under consideration. The interview sought to develop a life history of each member's decision, including the steps through which the representative went, the considerations which he weighted, and the political actors who influenced him. These interview data were supplemented by a good deal of immersion in the process: repeated conversations with staff, lobbyists, and journalists, the reading of documents, and observations of committee meetings and floor debates.
Each of the sampled members was interviewed several times during the course of the session on different votes. It should be emphasized that the unit of analysis is the decision, not the congressman, or in other words, the number of representatives multiplied by the number of decisions on which each was interviewed. All interviews were conducted face-to-face in Washington D.C. in 1969. To minimize recall deficiencies, respondents were interviewed at the time of the vote or within the following few days.
For more information on the study, including detailed sampling and method information, please refer to Kingdon, J.W. (1989). Congressman's voting decisions. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Curated
Setting the Alcohol-control Agenda: Popular Attitudes and Legislative Responses Toward Alcohol Control and Prohibition in the United States, 1890-1950 (ICPSR 20903)
Released/updated on: 2008-02-06
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1890-01-01--1950-12-31
These datasets were constructed to discern whether the dramatic policy punctuations associated with the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments to the United States Constitution, which instituted and repealed, respectively, the policy of alcohol prohibition, could best be accounted for through the use of punctuated equilibrium theory. To that end, two datasets were constructed. The first attempts to gauge public attitudes toward alcohol control and prohibition, as well as its place on the public agenda, through a coding of all entries related to alcohol control and prohibition in the READER'S GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE, from 1890 through 1950, using a simplified version of the general coding protocols of the Policy Agendas Project (PAP). The second dataset seeks to gauge legislative activity and the issues placed on the legislative agenda through a similar coding of the hearings sections in the Congressional Information Service's CIS ANNUAL: ABSTRACTS OF CONGRESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS AND LEGISLATIVE HISTORY CITATIONS for the same time period.
Curated
State Legislative Committee Systems in the United States, 1981 (ICPSR 8389)
Released/updated on: 1992-02-16
Geographic coverage: United States
This collection focuses on the committee systems in the separate state legislatures in the United States. The data were collected by mail questionnaire sent to a national sample of state legislators at the close of the 1981 legislative sessions. Included are responses to questions about the management, operation, and efficiency of legislative committee systems as well as problems perceived in the committee system. State legislators were asked to evaluate the performance and centrality of the committees they served on and their legislative chamber as a whole.
Curated
United States House of Representatives Committee Assignment Request Data, 80th-103rd Congress (ICPSR 21080)
Released/updated on: 2008-02-26
Geographic coverage: United States
These data were collected by Scott Frisch and Sean Kelly between 2000 and 2004 from the archived papers of former members of the United States Congress. In most cases, Frisch, Kelly, or both traveled to archives to collect the textual materials from which the data were generated. In most cases, the request data come from the committee request summaries (briefing books) compiled for the Democratic Members of the Committee on Ways and Means, the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and the Republican Executive Committee on Committees. In addition to Committee notebooks, copies of the letters that individual members wrote in support of their assignment requests were collected. The format of these letters typically consists of a lengthy justification of the member's qualifications and need for his or her first request, with perhaps a paragraph devoted to a list of additional committees to which assignment would be acceptable. In a few instances, when no briefing book was available, preferences were reconstructed from the request letters submitted by the members to their party committees. In these cases, the most recent letter was considered the definitive statement of the member's preferences. Data regarding subcommittee assignments are not included in these data, nor are temporary committee assignments, nor are assignments that were not made at the beginning of a Congressional term. Committee requests for temporary, joint committees, boards, select committees and the like are also not included. The total number of committee preference listings is 2,480. Included are the committee preferences of 1,163 first-term members, as well as committee transfer requests made by 1,317 incumbents. For Democrats, the data cover the 80th through the 103rd Congress (but not the 85th Congress, which has not been located), comprising the committee preferences of 1,366 members, 655 first-term Democrats, and 711 incumbent Democrats. For the Republicans, the data cover the 86th through the 102nd Congress, reflecting the committee preferences of 1,114 Republican members, including 452 first-term Republicans and 662 incumbent Republicans. Republican data prior to the 86th Congress could not be located and were apparently lost during an effort to consolidate the records of congressional leaders prior to the 86th Congress. Data for Republicans from the 103rd Congress have not been located.