DOI: 10.3886/icpsr09033.v1
title: Candidates for the European Parliament, April-May 1979
title: Version 1

description: This data collection provides information on the goals and attitudes toward current political issues of a sample of 742 candidates for seats in the first elections to the European Parliament, held in June 1979. Interviews were conducted during the two months preceding the election in each of the nine nations that were members of the European Community. The sample includes 62 percent of those who were elected to the European Parliament. Candidates were asked about their reasons for choosing to become candidates, and their views on the goals, priorities, and powers of the European Parliament and the European Community. In addition, the study includes data on each respondent's career history and political affiliation, as well as information on the contacts the candidates had with other parties and the subjective sense of closeness they felt toward them, both in their own nations and across national boundaries within the European Community. The study was designed to permit comparison of opinions between the general public and candidates, and it includes a large number of questions that were also administered to the general public in EURO-BAROMETER 11: YEAR OF THE CHILD IN EUROPE, APRIL 1979 (ICPSR 7752). Demographic information collected on respondents includes age, occupation (other than any political position already held), religion and frequency of religious observation, number of foreign languages spoken, and self-assigned political position on a left-right scale. Background information on the respondents' parents was also obtained, including foreign languages spoken by parents, political affiliation, and occupation.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Standardized missing values.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: (1) A complete listing of codes and marginals is included in the codebook with deleted variables marked by an asterisk (*) and truncated variables marked with a pound sign (#). (2) The data collection instrument is provided by ICPSR as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.
description: Candidates campaigning for European Parliament seats in 1979 in each of the nine nations of the EC (France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain [including Northern Ireland], Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg, and Belgium.)
description: The number of interviews with candidates of different parties in each country was proportional to the number of seats each party was expected to win.