Attitudes on the Justifiability of Abortion in the United States (World Values Survey, 1982-2011)

A data set on attitudes about the justifiability of abortion in the United States based on World Values Survey responses recorded across six waves (from 1982 to 2011). I assembled this data frame probably around 2014 and routinely use it for in-class illustration about regression, post-estimation simulation, quantities of interest, and how to think about modeling a dependent variable that is on a 1-10 scale, but has curious heaping patterns.

Usage

wvs_usa_abortion

Format

A data frame with 10387 observations on the following 16 variables.

wvsccode

the country code for the United States (a numeric constant)

wave

the survey wave

year

the survey year corresponding to the survey wave

aj

the justifiability of abortion on a 1-10 scale (1 = never justifiable; 10 = always justifiable)

age

the age of the respondent in years

collegeed

a dummy variable that equals 1 if the respondent graduated from college

female

a dummy variable that equals 1 if the respondent is a woman

unemployed

a dummy variable that equals 1 if the respondent is unemployed

ideology

the ideological self-placement of the respondent on a 1-10 scale (1 = furthest to the left; 10 = furthest to the right)

satisfinancial

the respondent's financial satisfaction with his/her life (1 = most dissatisfied; 10 = most satisfied)

postma4

the post-materialist index for the respondent (-1 = materialist; 0 = mixed, 1 = post-materialist)

cai

the child autonomy index, which ranges from -2 to 2

trustmostpeople

can most people be trusted (1) or "(you) never can be too careful" (0)

godimportant

the importance of God to the respondent on a 1-10 scale (1 = God is not at all important; 10 = God is most important)

respectauthority

would more respect for authority be a welcome change to the United States?

nationalpride

a dummy that equals 1 if the respondent is very proud to be an American.

Details

Data come from the World Values Survey. Note that the college education variable is curiously NA until the third survey wave. The child autonomy index ranges from -2 to 2 where increasing values indicate that children should learn determination and independence over obedience and religious faith. The respectauthority variable is coded where -1 means the respondent believes greater respect for authority in the United States as a future change to the country would be a bad thing. 0 means the respondent doesn't mind such a change. 1 = the respondent believes it would be a good thing.