Australian Election Study, 1987

Abstract

The Australian Election Study (AES) is a survey designed to collect data for academic research on Australian public opinion and behaviour during federal elections. All the studies are national, post-election self-completion (mail-in, mail-out) surveys with the sample drawn randomly from the electoral register. The 1987 study had two goals. The first was to continue the broad line of enquiry established by the 1967 and 1979 Australian National Political Attitudes surveys so that patterns of stability and change in the political attitudes and behaviour of the Australian electorate could be traced over two decades. The second was to assess the electoral impact of forces specific to the 1987 election in order better to understand its outcome. For 1987, the total sample was 3,061. Of those sampled, 156 moved/gone away and 1,080 were refusals/non-responses. There were 1,825 valid responses giving an effective response of 62.8. The survey instrument consisted of 6 sections totalling 90 questions. Section A: The Federal Election included 18 questions on media coverage of the 1987 election and previous voting record/preferences. Section B: Political Leaders included 7 questions about party leader preferences and reasons for preferences. Section C: Election Issues included 26 questions about the economy and non-economic issues including defence, mining, health, ties to the UK and USA, the flag, law and order, migration and immigrants, Australian aborigines, censorship, unions, homosexuality, and gender equality. Section D: Social and Political Goals included 8 questions about the effectiveness of government and how the country should be governed. Section E: Education and Work included 11 questions about educational qualifications/background and work experience. Section F: Personal Background included 20 questions about birthplace and family background, place of residence, and work and religious affiliations. A systematic random sample of 2762 cases covering all States and Territories except South Australia was provided by the Australian Electoral Office from its computerised electoral roll. A supplementary sample of 299 cases was selected manually from the alphabetical list of electors in South Australia by microfiche. Respondents are mailed on the Monday following the federal election (which is held on a Saturday). The survey remained in the field for about 8 weeks; the bulk of the responses were received following Waves 1 and 2. Wave 1 Questionnaire, letter Week 1 Wave 2 Thank you/reminder postcard Week 2 Wave 3 Questionnaire, letter Week 5 Wave 4 Final letter, Week 7 In the 1987 survey, the fourth and final wave elicited comparatively few extra responses and was not considered cost-effective; it has not been used in the post-1987 surveys. Some of the information above was taken from the 1987 questionnaire and the following book: Ian McAllister and Juliet Clark. 2007. Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Study, 1987-2004. Canberra: Australian Social Science Data Archive. 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.