American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1986

This data collection offers information on the opinions and attitudes of the general public and a select group of elites, or opinion leaders, on matters relating to foreign policy. The primary objectives of this study were to define the parameters of public opinion within which decision makers must operate and to compare the attitudes of the general public with those of opinion leaders. For the purposes of this study, "opinion leaders" are defined as those who are in positions of leadership in government, academia, business and labor, the media, religious institutions, special interest groups, and private foreign policy organizations. Variables in the general public cross-section file and the elite file include opinions on specific foreign policy problems, economic and military aid to other countries, the role of the United States in foreign affairs, use of United States troops in other parts of the world, a nuclear freeze, the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"), and terrorism. Demographic characteristics such as age, sex, race, income, marital status, and educational achievement are also supplied in the cross-section file, along with feeling thermometers which probe for the respondent's attitudes toward various foreign countries and toward well-known political figures. A follow-up survey of the general public was also undertaken to identify changes in attitudes that might have occurred in the aftermath of the Iran/Contra affair. This follow-up file contains a limited set of pertinent variables from the original general public cross-section study.