DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04590.v1
title: Eurobarometer 64.3: Foreign Languages, Biotechnology, Organized Crime, and Health Items, November-December 2005
title: Version 1

description: This round of Eurobarometer surveys diverged from the standard Eurobarometer measures and queried respondents on (1) foreign languages, (2) biotechnology, (3) organized crime and corruption, (4) health consciousness, (5) smoking, (6) AIDS prevention, (7) medical errors, and (8) consumer rights. For the first topic, foreign languages, respondents were asked to identify their native language, and first, second, and third foreign languages spoken, including proficiency and frequency of use. In addition, respondents were asked to identify the main reasons to learn a new language, methods used in learning, and barriers preventing learning. Respondents' opinions were sought regarding the best age to start learning a first and second new language, language support, and whether there should be a common language used throughout the European Union (EU). For the second topic, respondents were asked about their understanding of biotechnology, including gene therapy, pharmacogenetics, genetically modified foods and plants, nanotechnology, stem cell research, and its application in industry. Respondents' opinions were sought regarding the use of these techniques, governing safety and regulatory processes, new technology development, and integration of biotechnology into society. Respondents were also queried about their knowledge of science and politics and discussion of these matters with others, their opinions regarding entity involvement, including the EU, in utilizing or advancing biotechnology, and their personal political involvement in this area. For the third topic, organized crime and corruption, respondents were asked to identify the degree of national corruption, sources where corruption exists, a regulatory force in reducing it, and any personal involvement with corruption, in addition to providing an opinion about whether information sharing or policy development may reduce corruption. For the fourth topic, health consciousness, respondents were asked about their current state of health, breastfeeding, dieting, views on eating, foods consumed, changes in eating or drinking patterns and associated reasons for these changes, ease of and barriers to eating healthily, and exercise. Respondents were asked about their knowledge of sports and physical activity, and their opinion about obesity among adults and children. For the fifth topic, smoking, respondents were asked about their smoking habits and use with other substances, sensitivity to smoke, knowledge about second-hand smoke, exposure to tobacco cessation campaigns, and the likelihood of quitting. In addition, respondents were asked to provide an opinion about smoking bans in public places and the consumption of alcohol and tobacco among pregnant women. For the sixth topic, AIDS prevention, respondents were asked about their knowledge of AIDS transmission, changes in personal behaviors influenced by AIDS, and their opinions regarding current national measures in managing the AIDS pandemic and the potential coordination with the EU. For the seventh topic, medical errors, respondents were asked about their awareness of incidents of medical errors in their country, the significance of those errors, personal experience of a medical error, the likelihood of avoiding an error, and their degree of concern about suffering a medical error. For the eighth and final topic covered by this survey, consumer rights, those respondents living in Poland were asked about where and how often they saw or heard information about consumer rights, how frequently the media talked about consumer rights, and who in the media was the source of this information. Respondents were also asked whether they had heard a particular message and to define the meaning of that message, to evaluate Poland's consumer rights in comparison to other EU countries, and to assess the effectiveness of the justice system in protecting consumer rights. In addition, respondents were queried about their knowledge of consumer rights in certain situations, which organizations they would trust to provide correct advice and information about consumer rights, and whether they would refer others to a specific organization that deals with consumer rights, Federacja Konsumentow. Demographic and other background information includes respondent's age, gender, height, and weight, nationality, origin of birth (personal and parental), religious affiliation and involvement, marital status, left-to-right political self-placement, occupation, age when stopped full-time education, household composition, use of a fixed or a mobile telephone, size of locality, region of residence, and language of interview.
description: Please review the "Weighting Information" section of the ICPSR codebook for this Eurobarometer study.
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: Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: Eurobarometer Survey Series
description: face-to-face interview 
The original data collection was carried out by TNS Opinion and Social, c/o EOS Gallup Europe (Brussels) on request of the European Commission.
The codebook and setup files for this collection contain characters with diacritical marks used in many European languages.
The documentation and/or setup files may contain references to Norway, but Norway was not a participant in this wave of Eurobarometer surveys. This collection contains no data for Norway.
The number of interviews for the Netherlands is 1,031 and the total number of interviews is 29,193. The table in the "Technical Specifications" section of the ICPSR codebook shows the number of interviews for the Netherlands as 1,032 and the total number of interviews as 28,694.
The number of interviews and fieldwork dates for the Turkish Cypriot Community were not provided by the data producer in the "Technical Specifications" section of the ICPSR codebook. Please refer to the "Processing Notes" section of the ICPSR codebook for the number of interviews and fieldwork dates for this country.
A split ballot was used for one or more questions in this survey. The variable V1170 defines the separate groups.
description: Citizens of the EU aged 15 and over residing in the 25 EU member countries: Austria, Belgium, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, plus the citizens in the two EU acceding countries: Bulgaria and Romania, the citizens in the two candidate countries: Croatia and Turkey, and the citizens in the Turkish Cypriot Community. Smallest Geographic Unit: country
description: Multistage national probability samples.