Attitudes Towards Immigrants, 1993, NSD Postal Data Collection

Attitudes Towards Immigrants (The Research Council of Norway's coordination survey of 1993).

Many social science research projects that are financed by the Research Council gather data from sample surveys. To better coordinate and take advantage of scientific and economic resources, the Research Council of Norway's coordination committee for survey research was established in January 1983. The committee was to have responsibility for the conduction of surveys, giving researchers the possibility of partaking in joint projects.

The survey in 1998 was conducted by Statistics Norway as a supplementary survey to the Labour Force Survey of the 1st quarter of 1988. This survey was in turn replicated in 1993, in two parts. Statistics Norway conducted an ordinary survey based on telephone interviews, whilst Norwegian Social Science Data Services conducted a thematically equivalent postal data collection. The data published here stems from the latter, postal survey.

The purpose of these surveys was to observe Norwegians' perceptions and knowledge about immigrants in Norway (except for immigrants from Northern Europe and North America), especially in light of people's social situation and attitudes on other areas. The survey contains information about the work and life situation, contact with immigrants, attitudes towards immigrants and immigration policy, values, political efficacy and economic deprivation.

The purpose of the supplementary survey (the postal part) was to map out to what degree the interview method affects the results of survey research. The questionnaire is thus made as close as possible to the questionnaire in the main survey that was conducted by SSB.

The questions in the beginning of the questionnaire(8-15 in the self-completion form) are simplifies. Question 33-35 in the primary survey are narrowed down to a single question (33 in the SSB survey, given the number 35 in the postal form). In regards to question 40, there are put up different answering alternatives, but this was asked as an open question by SSB. The answering alternatives in question 45 (44 in the postal form) are different. After the printing of the postal forms, "seldom" was included as an answer alternative in the primary sample.

Also, one asks of education in the postal survey. As the dataset contains an education code from SSB's education register, comparisons between stated education and registred education are made possible.