Protest Surveys: Fridays for Future - Global Climate Strike on September 20th, 2019 (Warsaw)

Since 2003, researchers associated with the Institute for the Study of Protest and Social Movements (Institut für Protest- und Bewegungsforschung, ipb, http://protestinstitut.eu) have conducted surveys at demonstrations. This study is part of this ongoing series. In Poland, surveys were first carried out in 2018 during a research fellowship funded by the DAAD and later, between 2018 and 2021, within the project ‘Civil Society Unrest in Poland: A Comparative Analysis of Contemporary Protest’ (funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, grant no. FKZ 01UL1816X). The aim of this survey is to gain insights into the composition and attitudes of participants in the “Fridays for Future” demonstration held in Warsaw on September 20th, 2019. The focus is particularly on socio-demographic characteristics, political attitudes, and evaluations of government policies on climate change and environmental protection of the respondents encountered at the demonstration. This survey is part of an international study on the Fridays for Future protests that used the same questionnaire in 19 cities in 15 countries in Europe, North America, and Australia to survey the protesters at parallel demonstrations taking place worldwide (de Moor et al. 2020). The research team estimated attendance at the Warsaw event to be 12,000. The questionnaire consisted of 76 questions comprising a total of 237 items in Polish. In order to allow for comparison with other protest surveys, the questionnaire relied on questions used in earlier questionnaires of the ipb. The questionnaire consists of the following groups of questions: • Motivation: open question about the motivation to take part in the demonstration • Protest mobilization: knowledge about the demonstration, mobilization network • Political activity: Membership in civil society organizations, past protest activity, forms of action • Political attitudes: evaluation of democracy, trust in institutions, self-placement on the political spectrum, party affiliation, voting tendency • Climate change policy related questions • Sociodemographic questions: gender, year of birth, education, occupation