Televised presidential campaign impact on voters

The major purpose of this study was to investigate television's impact on voters during a presidential campaign. Of particular interest were the effects of television news and televised political advertising on people's political images and information. The questionnaires centered on people's uses of television and their candidate and issue orientations. Respondents also were asked about orientations, such as party loyalty, which, while unlikely to be influenced directly by television, might mediate communication effects. The study is designed as a panel, with three pre-election personal interviews and one post-election telephone interview conducted with a random sample of adults living in the Syracuse, New York, metropolitan area. In the first survey in early September, 731 respondents were interviewed, 650 of these were reinterviewed in early October, and again in early November, just before election day. Finally, 676 of the original 731 respondents were contacted for the brief post-election telephone interview. The data is organized in one file containing all four surveys in a single record for each respondent.