American national election study, 1980

de University of Michigan. Center for Political Studies.

The American National Election Study, 1980, is the sixteenth in a series of studies of national elections to be produced by the Political Behavior Program of the Survey Research Center and the Center for Political Studies and the second study to be conducted under the auspices of a National Science Foundation grant (#SOC 77-0888) which provides long-term support for national election studies. The 1980 Election Study consists of eight integrated survey data collections occurring at strategically chosen periods in the course of the election year, plus a vote validation study and contextual data. Four areas were targeted for special attention: new measurement of party identification, the measurement of voter attitudes concerning issues of public policy, new content concerning public perceptions of and responses to political leadership, and the exploration of social networks in the crystallization of the vote choice. The National Election Studies Board established a 1980 Presidential Elections Committee which consisted of three Board members (Merrill Shanks, John Jackson, David Sears) and three additional scholars (Richard S. Brody, Jack Dennis, Donald R. Kinder). This committee along with the Center for Political Studies project staff was responsible for the planning of the year-long study. Evolution of the design of the NES/CPS American National Election Study, 1980, resulted in the specification of nine discrete data collections. Interviews were taken with samples of citizens of voting age as of November 4, 1980, living within the coterminous United States. As in 1978, congressional districts constitute the primary sampling areas. Four of the data collections involved a year-long panel. The panel began in late January as a national cross-section of 1,008 cases. Interviewing for the first wave, hereafter designated as P-1, ended before the New Hampshire primary on February 24. Respondents from the first data collection, P-1, were re-interviewed in June immediately after the last set of primary elections which were held on June 3. In this element of the design, known as P-2, 843 respondents were interviewed. The third panel interview, P-3, was taken during the month of September when 769 respondents were reinterviewed. The fourth and final panel element, P-4, was taken immediately after the election and consists of 764 cases including reinterviews with panel members who did not participate in P-3. P-4 was a fifteen-minute telephone interview.