ABC News Listening to America Poll, May 1996

Resource Information

The work ABC News Listening to America Poll, May 1996 represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Bowdoin College Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

ABC News Listening to America Poll, May 1996

Creator

• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]
• ABC News

Author

• ABC News

Contributor

• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]

Subject

• drugs
• economic conditions
• employment
• expectations
• families
• government
• immigration policy
• job security
• life plans
• life satisfaction
• morality
• Finance, Personal
• national pride
• personal finances
• public opinion
• public schools
• quality of life
• retirement
• social issues
• social problems
• survey
• trust in government
• national economy
• attitudes
• communities
• crime

Genre

• survey

Summary

This special topic poll, conducted April 30 to May 6, 1996, 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 sought Americans' views on the most important problems facing the United States, their local communities and their own families. Respondents rated the public schools, crime, and drug problems at the national and local levels, their level of optimism about their own future and that of the country, and the reasons they felt that way. Respondents were asked whether they were better off financially than their parents were at their age, whether they expected their own children to be better off financially than they were, and whether the American Dream was still possible for most people. Respondents then compared their expectations about life to their actual experiences in areas such as job security, financial earnings, employment benefits, job opportunities, health care benefits, retirement savings, and leisure time. A series of questions asked whether the United States was in a long-term economic and moral decline, whether the country's main problems were caused more by a lack of economic opportunity or a lack of morality, and whether the United States was still the best country in the world. Additional topics covered immigration policy and the extent to which respondents trusted the federal, state, and local governments. Demographic variables included respondents' sex, age, race, education level, marital status, household income, political party affiliation, political philosophy, voter registration and participation history, labor union membership, the presence of children in the household, whether these children attended a public school, and the employment status of respondents and their spouses