Investing in Education in Europe: Attitudes, Politics and Policies (INVEDUC)

Objective: The INVEDUC project analyses public attitudes and preferences of citizens regarding different aspects of education policy in eight Western European countries. It also studies to what extent and via which mechanisms public opinion influences processes of policy-making.

Method: The INVEDUC survey of public opinion on education policy was conducted in April in May 2014 in eight Western European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The total number of observations is 8,905 (i.e. between 1,000 and 1,500 for the different countries), drawn from random samples of the respective populations. The interviews were conducted by native speakers via computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and implemented by TNS Infratest Sozialforschung, Munich.

Questionnaire content: The survey covers the following aspects related to education policy: support for education spending relative to spending for other social policies; preferences for the distribution of education spending across different sectors of the education system (early childhood education and care, general schools, vocational education and training, higher education); willingness to pay taxes for additional spending on education; support for education spending in the face of different fiscal and policy trade-offs (higher taxes, higher public debt, cutbacks in other parts of the welfare state); support for social investment policies vs. social transfers and workfare policies; attitudes and preferences regarding the governance of education (comprehensive education, decentralisation of education governance, division of labor between public and private provision of education, school competition, role of employers in VET). The survey contains a number of experimental components, in particular when measuring the effect of trade-offs on preferences.

Demography: national citizenship; other citizenship; city size; financial situation of household; age (year of birth); sex; highest educational attainment (country-specific); age at completion of full-time education; employment status or age at completion of full-time education; current situation; reasons for part-time employment; occupational status; occupation (ISCO 2008); public service employment; sector; likelihood of own unemployment; net household income (country specific, classified); net personal income; education-related debt; household size; number of children in household; number of children under 10 years of age in household; single parent; trade union membership; parents´ university degree.