Australian Election Study, 1996

The Australian Election Study (AES) is designed to collect data for academic research on Australian public opinion and behaviour during federal elections. Each study is based on a national, post-election, self-completion (mail-in, mail-out) survey consisting mainly of multiple choice questions. The 1996 study is the fourth in a series of surveys beginning in 1987 which have been timed to coincide with Australian Federal elections. The series also builds on the 1967 and 1979 Australian Political Attitudes Surveys. The Australian Election Studies aim to provide a long-term perspective on stability and change in the political attitudes and behaviour of the Australian electorate, and investigate the changing social bases of Australian politics as the economy and society modernise and change character. In addition to these long-term goals they examine the political issues prevalent in the election and assesses their importance for the election result. In some cases, questions are repeated in each survey so that trends can be observed over a long period of time. However, in each survey there are always new sets of questions or modules added to gauge public opinion on contemporary social and political issues in Australia. The 1996 survey replicates many questions from earlier surveys but also introduces a variety of new questions including a section on national identity. Other sections covered the respondent's interest in the election campaign and politics, their past and present political affiliation, evaluation of parties and candidates, alignment with parties on various election issues, evaluation of the economic situation and economic policies, attitudes to a range of environmental issues, attitudes to foreign affairs and defence issues and attitudes to contemporary social policy issues including equal opportunity, censorship, migration, assistance for aborigines, abortion, criminal law, expenditure on social services, the monarchy and the Australian flag. Background variables include level of education, employment status, occupation, type of employer, position at workplace, trade union membership, sex, age, own and parents country of birth, parents' political preferences, religion, marital status, income, and where applicable, the occupation, trade union membership and political preference of the respondent's spouse. The breakdown of the 1996 survey sections is as follows: Section A: The Election Campaign (12 questions) Section B: Party Preference and Voting (17 questions) Section C: The Candidates (7 questions) Section D: Election Issues (9 questions) Section E: Social Policy (13 questions) Section F: Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 questions) Section G: National Identity (12 questions) Section H: Education and Work (8 questions) Section I: ? Section J: Personal Background (18 questions) The sample for this study was stratified, systematic and random. A sample of electors for all Australia except South Australia was drawn from the Commonwealth Electoral Roll by the Australian Electoral Commission following the close of rolls for the 1996 election. The Commission supplied name and address information only, to be used only for this study. The South Australian sample was selected manually from the alphabetical microfiche list of electors available for that state in early February. The data is available in a variety of formats including SPSS Portable, Stata v.8, Stata v.7, Nesstar Publisher, NSDstat, DIF, DBase, Textfile, Delimited, SAS and Comma Separated Value file. The data can be downloaded in a zipped folder together with documentation in pdf or xml format.
Type
Collection
Title
Australian Election Study, 1996
Collection Type
Dataset
Access Privileges
Australian Election Study
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
10.4225/13/50BBF1BF4D141
Metadata Language
English
Data Language
English
Brief Description
The Australian Election Study (AES) is a national, post-election, self-completion survey which collects data on the political opinions and behaviour of the Australian public. Each survey contains questions relating to the role of: *Media and Media Exposure *General Political Interest and Knowledge *Perceptions of the Election Campaign *Party Identification and Prior Voting History *Parents' and Partner Partisanship *Vote in the Election and Explanations for it *Party Images *Perceptions of the Major Party Leaders and the Content of their Public Images *Election Issues *Social Policy Issues *Socio-demographic Measures
Full Description
The Australian Election Study (AES) is designed to collect data for academic research on Australian public opinion and behaviour during federal elections. Each study is based on a national, post-election, self-completion (mail-in, mail-out) survey consisting mainly of multiple choice questions. The 1996 study is the fourth in a series of surveys beginning in 1987 which have been timed to coincide with Australian Federal elections. The series also builds on the 1967 and 1979 Australian Political Attitudes Surveys. The Australian Election Studies aim to provide a long-term perspective on stability and change in the political attitudes and behaviour of the Australian electorate, and investigate the changing social bases of Australian politics as the economy and society modernise and change character. In addition to these long-term goals they examine the political issues prevalent in the election and assesses their importance for the election result. In some cases, questions are repeated in each survey so that trends can be observed over a long period of time. However, in each survey there are always new sets of questions or modules added to gauge public opinion on contemporary social and political issues in Australia. The 1996 survey replicates many questions from earlier surveys but also introduces a variety of new questions including a section on national identity. Other sections covered the respondent's interest in the election campaign and politics, their past and present political affiliation, evaluation of parties and candidates, alignment with parties on various election issues, evaluation of the economic situation and economic policies, attitudes to a range of environmental issues, attitudes to foreign affairs and defence issues and attitudes to contemporary social policy issues including equal opportunity, censorship, migration, assistance for aborigines, abortion, criminal law, expenditure on social services, the monarchy and the Australian flag. Background variables include level of education, employment status, occupation, type of employer, position at workplace, trade union membership, sex, age, own and parents country of birth, parents' political preferences, religion, marital status, income, and where applicable, the occupation, trade union membership and political preference of the respondent's spouse. The breakdown of the 1996 survey sections is as follows: Section A: The Election Campaign (12 questions) Section B: Party Preference and Voting (17 questions) Section C: The Candidates (7 questions) Section D: Election Issues (9 questions) Section E: Social Policy (13 questions) Section F: Foreign Affairs and Defence (7 questions) Section G: National Identity (12 questions) Section H: Education and Work (8 questions) Section I: ? Section J: Personal Background (18 questions) The sample for this study was stratified, systematic and random. A sample of electors for all Australia except South Australia was drawn from the Commonwealth Electoral Roll by the Australian Electoral Commission following the close of rolls for the 1996 election. The Commission supplied name and address information only, to be used only for this study. The South Australian sample was selected manually from the alphabetical microfiche list of electors available for that state in early February. The data is available in a variety of formats including SPSS Portable, Stata v.8, Stata v.7, Nesstar Publisher, NSDstat, DIF, DBase, Textfile, Delimited, SAS and Comma Separated Value file. The data can be downloaded in a zipped folder together with documentation in pdf or xml format.
Contact Email
Ian.McAllister@anu.edu.au
Contact Address
School of Politics and International Relations Research School of Social Sciences Building 22, Haydon-Allen Building The Australian National University ACT 0200 Australia
Contact Phone Number
+61 (0)2 6125 5553
Contact Fax Number
+61 (0)2 6125 3051
Principal Investigator
Professor Ian McAllister
Collaborators
Roger Jones; David Gow
Fields of Research
1606 - Political Science; 160601 - Australian Government and Politics
Socio-Economic Objective
9402 - Government and Politics
Keywords
Australia; Culture; Defence; Economic policy; Elections; Environment; International relations; National identity; Political parties; Politicians; Politics; Social issues; Social policy; Voting behaviour
Type of Research Activity
Pure basic research
Date Coverage
1996
1996
Time Period
1996
Geospatial Location
name=Australia; northlimit=-9.221084; southlimit=-54.777218; westlimit=112.921454; eastlimit=159.105459
iso19139dcmiBox
Date of data creation
1996
Year of data publication
1996
Creator(s) for Citation
Jones
Roger
McAllister
Ian
Gow
David
Publisher for Citation
Australian Data Archive
Publications
http://www.ada.edu.au/documents/aes-trends-pdf
Ian McAllister and Sarah Cameron. Trends in Australian Political Opinion: results from the Australian Election Study, 1987-2013. Canberra: The Australian National University. 2014.
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Related Websites
Australian Election Study
http://aes.anu.edu.au/
Questionnaire used in 1996 Australian Electoral Study survey
http://ada.edu.au/ADAData/questionnaires/ADA.QUESTIONNAIRE.00943.pdf.zip
Australian Election Study Codebooks
http://ada.edu.au/ADAData/codebooks/ADA.CODEBOOK.00943.pdf.zip
The Australian Election Study: An Overview by Ian McAllister
http://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/staff/mcallister/pubs/Outline%20of%20AES%20surveys.pdf
Australian Election Study - related publications of interest
http://aes.anu.edu.au/publications
Australian Data Archive catalog records
http://www.ada.edu.au/social-science/browse/politics-and-elections/australian-election-study
Access Rights
Conditions of access to the Australian Election Study data can be found at the following link: http://ada.anu.edu.au/ada/access-conditions The Australian Election Studies are "General Datasets" and therefore General user undertaking applies. The following is a link to the General Access Undertaking form: http://ada.anu.edu.au/documents/ada-general-undertaking-form
Retention Period
Indefinitely
Data Size
SPSS Portable 1,773 KB; Stata v.8 1,720 KB; Stata v.7 1,715 KB; Nesstar Publisher 1,807 KB; NSDstat; DIF 1,807 KB; DBase 1,736 KB; Textfile 1,734 KB; Delimited 1,735 KB; SAS 1,752 KB; Comma Separated Value file 1,752 KB
Status: Published
Published to:
  • Australian National University
  • Australian National Data Service
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