DOI: 10.6077/27t1-tf43
title: German Voter Behavior Panel, 1990-1992

description: &lt;p&gt;Multi-wave follow-up survey on judgement on parties and politicians. Attitude to current political and social questions. Topics: In all three waves (in the east as in the west) the following questions were posed: interest in politics; judgement on the general as well as personal economic situation and expected future economic development; party preference (Sunday question, second vote); interest in a nation-wide eligiblity for the CSU; parties one cannot vote for; frequency of reading the political part of daily newspapers and of weekly political magazines; frequency of watching news and political broadcasts; sympathy scale for selected top politicians and the parties; issue relevance and issue ability of the parties; perceived changes in selected political areas such as unemployment, drugs, equal rights, security of pensions, social justice, environmental protection and housing supply of the population; personal position and assumed position of the parties regarding selected political questions such as reduction in working hours or increase in income and making abortion easier; sympathy scale for the parties, for the trade unions and employers; anomy scale; self-classification as well as classification of the parties on a left-right continuum; complexity of politics; perceived personal powerlessness and assumed disinterest of politicians in ordinary people; general judgement on the economic system, the system of social security and the political system; trust in institutions such as the Federal Government, the Federal Parliament, the Federal German Armed Forces, the judiciary, the political parties, the police and the Federal Constitutional Court; forms of political participation; ASKO scale; classification of the parties on the ASKO scale; party identification; intensity and length of party inclination; parties as representatives of the interests of selected groups; knowledge about the significance of first and second votes; postmaterialism; religiousness; union membership; characterization of social surroundings as persons with similar political views; party currently most favored by mood. Interviewer rating: length of interview; presence of other persons during interview. Also encoded was: length of interview; identification of interviewer. The following questions were posed in at least one survey wave and one part of the state: changes in general as well as personal economic situation; most important reasons for one's own voting decision; attitude to selected peoples and religious groups such as Americans, applicants for political asylum, Buddhists, citizens of the GDR, French, Jews, Moslems, East Germans, Russians, Swiss and Turks; election participation and behavior at the polls in the last Federal Parliament election; personality profiles of the two candidates for chancellor Kohl and Lafontaine in comparison; personal position and assumed position of the parties regarding reduction in government social expenditures, West German participation in military actions of the United Nations, restriction of automobile traffic, possible unification of the two German nations, necessity of military intervention in Irak, reasonableness of financial sacrifice for unification and immigration restrictions for foreigners; positive and negative feelings regarding selected terms such as harshness, obedience, uncompromising stand, strictness, leadership personality, self-discipline and discipline; classification of the candidates for chancellor Lafontaine and Kohl on a left-right continuum; most important communication partner of respondent for political conversations; assumed party preference of this conversation partner; political knowledge such as e.g. knowledge of the name of the CDU secretary-general as well as the Federal Parliament President; knowledge of the year of construction of the wall and the proportion of Russians among the citizens of the Soviet Union; employment in the civil service; company size; most important characteristics of work; place of work at place of residence; characterization of circle of friends regarding religiousness and proportion of trade union members; status of father, mother as well as respondent as refugee, exiled from home, emigrant from East Germany or ethnic German from Eastern Europe; residential status; city size. Interviewer rating: description of place of residence; number of residential units in building; reliability of respondent. The following additional questions were posed in the east in at least one wave: change of general as well as personal economic situation since introduction of the DM as currency; attitude to Russians, Vietnamese and West Germans; filing claim to possession of the residential building of respondent by earlier owners; concern for future claims to possession; personal attitude and assumed position of the parties regarding criminal prosecution of former SED functionaries and STASI employees.&lt;/p&gt;
description: collection_notes: The data set contains the data of a three-wave panel survey in West Germany augmented by a two-wave panel in the East of the country at the last two times of survey. The panel data set, three-wave for the West and two-wave for the East, is available in an integrated form such that building on the respondents of the respective first wave the data from the following surveys was added. In the first survey wave about 2000 persons were interviewed. For reasons of cost the second West German survey wave was reduced to a sample of 1000, in order to be able to conduct a sample in the east.