Southern Focus Poll, South Survey, Spring 2000

"Southerners tend to slip through the cracks between state surveys, which are unreliable for generalizing to the region, on the one hand, and national sample surveys, which usually contain too few Southerners to allow detailed examination, on the other. And few surveys routinely include questions specifically about the South. To remedy this situation, the [Odum] Institute and the Center for the Study of the American South sponsor the Southern Focus Poll" (Odum Institute).

Southern and non-Southern residents are surveyed yearly and "are asked questions about economic conditions in their communities; cultural issues such as Southern accent, the Confederate flag and 'Dixie;' race relations; feelings toward migrants to the South; and characteristics of Southerners vs. Northerners" (Odum Institute).

All of the data sets from the Southern Focus Polls archived here are generously made available by the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (OIRSS).

Data File

Cases: 1,013
Variables: 158
Weight Variable: TOTWT and WTVARS

The variable WTVARS is "for weighting the data by household size. The weight variable TOTWT is based on the Census of Population and allows a user to combine the Southern and non-Southern data sets" (Odum Institute Survey Methodology), and also includes the weight for household size.

Data Collection

Date Collected: Date Collected: January 29 - March 30, 2000

Funded By

The Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill; the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill; and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Collection Procedures

Telephone interview surveys

Sampling Procedures

The target population for the telephone survey consisted of adults age 18 or older, residing in households with telephones in the United States. "The Odum Institute purchased two random-digit dialing (RDD) samples from Genesys Sampling Systems (GSS) of Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: a sample of Southern numbers, and a sample of non-Southern numbers. To give each residential telephone number within each sample an approximately equal chance of being dialed, GSS first systematically stratified each sample to reflect each state's proportion of the appropriate region's population. For each state, GSS then estimated the proportion of telephone numbers beginning with each three-digit prefix in use in that state. This estimate was based on the proportion of numbers with each prefix listed in the telephone directories for the state. Strings of four random digits, confined to working banks where known, were generated by computer to complete the phone numbers. Using this method, GSS produced sets of Southern and non-Southern numbers" (Odum Institute Survey Methodology).

"The target respondent within each household was the person living in the household, age 18 or over, with the next birthday... At least eight call attempts were made to each telephone number, at least 24 hours apart" (Odum Institute Survey Methodology).

Principal Investigators

The Odum Institute for Research in Social Science of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.