NES 2002 AUXILIARY FILE: CONTEXTUAL DATA 

-----

NES 2002 study planning allowed some staff time towards preparing a 
contextual dataset to be released and used as a supplement to study data.  
This auxiliary file is the result of those efforts.  While time 
constraints ultimately limited the scope and content of the file, we hope
that it will be useful to analysts, and also serve as a starting point for
those who are gathering contextual data on their own.  Perhaps in the 
future we will be able to expand on the file.  We would welcome
correspondence from researchers who are interested in contributing their 
own such contextual files to the NES user community and public at large.

-----

To read in the data, unZIP or move the files into directory 
"C:\ANES\2002\" and follow the instructions in the headers of the 
"run" files provided for SAS, SPSS, or STATA.  File "aux02var.txt" is 
the codebook variable description file and contains important 
documentation.

-----

The data have principally been retrieved from the following publicly 
available sources:  VoteSmart, Congressional Quarterly, Congress.org, 
Boston Globe online candidate biographies, CNN candidate information,
THOMAS, Politics1, and candidate Web sites, together with miscellaneous
publically released data available in news source content.

The core of the contextual variables are the biographical variables for
the Democratic and Republican candidates and retiring incumbents.
Due to time constraints, certain of these variables have not been recoded
to devised numeric schemes but contain descriptive text, for example,
CNN occupational descriptions and names of higher-educational institutions. 
In general, for the format of this data file is less highly processed than
typical NES study data.

Among the biographical variables, considerable time was spent on
identification of candidate's race, and for incumbents racial identification
was based on self-identification as provided to Congressional Quarterly.
Military service was particularly prone for absence in information sources
but what could be found has been included.

Candidate variables V024500a-V024536 from the 2002 Pre-Post file are also
present in this file, including variables for candidate gender. 


V021201- V021202c  State and district identification
V024500a-V024536   NES Pre-Post candidate variables
V026001a-V026019   Democratic candidate biographical variables
V026021a-V026039   Republican candidate biographical variables
V026041a-V026059   Other candidate biographical variables
V026061a-V026079   Retiring incumbent biographical variables
V026101 -V026109c  Percentages -Incum Pres and party support, voting partic
V026110a-V026111b  Democratic, Republican incumbent party ranks; first elected
V026200 -V026202u  Incumbent committee membership
V026301a-V026317b  1999, 2000 CQ Incumbent ratings by special interest groups
V026401 -V026412   Incumbent votes on specific issues 106th Congress (CQ) 

