DOI: 10.3886/icpsr07513.v1
title: German Election Panel Study, 1976
title: Version 1

description: This panel study was conducted in three waves: two preceding and one immediately following the German federal election in 1976. The study represents a joint project of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the Zentralarchiv fur Empirische Sozialforschung, the University of Cologne, and the Zentrum fur Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen, Mannheim. The design of the questionnaire and its wording attempted to assure continuity and comparability with the GERMAN ELECTION PANEL STUDY, 1972 (ICPSR 7102), especially in eliciting information on party preference, the evaluation of leading politicians, and opinions about important political issues. Of particular note is the measurement of attitudes toward the political parties: several different measures were used to tap the various dimensions of party preference. Respondents were asked to separately evaluate each party and leading politicians, including the candidates for the position of Chancellor, Helmut Kohl and Helmut Schmidt, on a feeling scalometer and to rank the parties in preference order. A central focus of all three waves was the respondents' self-placement of the political parties on several versions of the left-right ideological dimension. Another component of the election study dealt with the respondents' opinions toward important problems, including the salience of economic issues for the German population. Open-ended questions were asked concerning the respondents' views of the economic situation, the election campaigns, a new political party, the German democratic process, public officials, and law and order. In the post-election wave, respondents were asked about the most important tasks facing Germany and the party that could best deal with these tasks, the reasons for the electoral outcome for each party, and their political participation and voting decisions during the election campaign. Also probed were respondents' views of their financial situation, the efficacy of old age pensions, unemployment, nuclear power plants, and the political unification of Western Europe. Additional items queried respondents about their general political activities, voting behavior and intentions, and political party preference. Also explored were respondents' satisfaction with their life achievement, views of the future, abortion, and divorce, and their vacation plans. Demographic items specify date and place of birth, age, sex, education, marital status, social class identification, occupation, income, union membership, political party affiliation, and religious preference and church attendance. See also the related collection, GERMAN ELECTION ASTUDY, 1980 (ICPSR 7963).
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: Performed consistency checks.; Standardized missing values.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: This study contains a weight variable (V3) which produces a representative sample of the voting-age citizens of the Federal Republic when used in analysis. The weight variable corrects for sex and age biases of the sample, and was constructed by comparing the age by sex distribution of the first-wave respondents with the census distribution. This weight variable should be used when analyzing any of the three panel waves.
description: German citizens aged 18 years and older who resided in private households, excluding West Berlin, in 1976.
description: A three-stage stratified, random sampling procedure was used, involving first, the selection of regional sampling points (WAHLBEZIRKE), then households within each sampling point, and finally individuals within each households. The first wave was conducted in the spring of 1976 and 2,076 respondents were interviewed. The second wave produced 1,529 panel respondents who were reinterviewed in the fall of that year. The third wave took place shortly after the October election and yielded 1,196 of the original panel respondents.