DOI: 10.17608/k6.auckland.2000940.v1
title: ISSP2000: Environment II

description: The tenth of 20 years of successful surveys for the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in New Zealand, run by Professor Philip Gendall in the Department of Marketing at Massey University.ISSP is a continuing annual programme of cross-national collaboration on surveys covering topics important for social science research. It brings together pre-existing social science projects and coordinates research goals, thereby adding a cross-national, cross-cultural perspective to the individual national studies. ISSP researchers especially concentrate on developing questions that are meaningful and relevant to all countries, and can be expressed in an equivalent manner in all relevant languages.Selection was via systematic random sampling of the electoral rolls.A verbose rundown on topics covered follows.Attitudes towards environmental protection. Preferred government measures for environmental protection. Private entrepreneurs as best possibility to solve economic problems; responsibility of the government to reduce income differences among the citizens; highest and next highest priority in the own country; attitude to modern science (scale); attitude to the environment (scale); judgement on the contrast of environmental protection and economic growth; attitude to animal experiments in pharmacology; economic growth harms the environment; earth cannot continue to support population growth at its present rate; attitude towards nature as creation of God, spiritual or sacred in itself or important but not spiritual.Willingness to pay higher prices and higher taxes or to accept reductions in standard of living for the benefit of protection of the environment; self-classification of participation in environmental protection (scale); knowledge about manner of functioning of antibiotics as destructive agent for bacteria or virus; understanding the theory of evolution; artificially produced chemicals as cause for cancer; knowledge of the danger of death from radioactivity; knowledge about the causes for the greenhouse effect; estimation of dangerousness of air pollution caused by cars for the environment, for the respondent and his family.Classification of air pollution from industrial waste gases, pesticides and chemicals in agriculture, water pollution and a rise in the world’s temperature caused by the greenhouse effect, the modification of genes of certain crops as dangerous for the environment; preference for the regulation of environmental protection by the government, the population or the economy; estimation of the efforts of the own country to protect the world environment; more effort for the environment by business and industry, people in general or the government; attitude towards international agreements for environmental problems that each country should be made to follow; agreement with poorer countries to make less effort than richer countries to protect the environment; economic progress will slow down without better protection of the environment.Likelihood of an ecological catastrophe within the next five years caused by a nuclear accident; trust in business and industry, environmental groups, government departments, newspapers, radio or TV programmes and university research centres as information sources about environmental issues; frequency of own efforts to sort glass or tins or plastic or newspapers for recycling; frequency of not using the car for environmental reasons; membership in an environmental protection organization; personal environmental political activities in the last five years through participation in signing petitions, giving donations to environmental groups as well as participating in demonstrations.Beliefs in God; residential status; estimation of the dangerousness of nuclear power stations for the environment; government should redistribute income; people can do little to change lives; people challenge authority too often; people with money should be left to enjoy it; people should follow conscience even if they break the law; private enterprise needs control; all societies have inequalities; the world is getting better.Demography: Age; sex; marital status; steady life-partner; years in school; current employment status; occupation (ISCO-88); employment in public sector; self-employed; number of employees; hours worked weekly; supervisor function; earnings of the respondent; family income; religious denomination; attendance of religious services; self-assessment of social class; union membership; party affiliation (left-right); size of household; household cycle; type of community: urban-rural; in some countries: ethnic affiliation of respondent and language.