Former Self-employed

Former self-employed persons were interviewed about their general living conditions, their attitudes towards self-employment, the opportunities and problems of setting up a business, the measures to promote self-employment and their political and social attitudes.

Topics: 1. Professional situation: gainful employment; current occupation; occupation within the last five years; general life satisfaction; assessment of the current own economic situation; number of employees; professional activity; business start-up.

2. Attitude towards self-employment: motivation to become self-employed (e.g. self-determined work, flexible working hours, new challenges, etc.); reasons for terminating self-employment (ranking, e.g. too much bureaucracy, high workload, too low income, etc.); willingness to become self-employed again; reasons against becoming self-employed again

3. Business start-up: evaluation of the current conditions for business start-ups in Germany.

4. Advice and support: desired measures of advice and support during self-employment (open).

5. Political and social attitudes: political interest; self-perception of the self-employed (in Germany the self-employed receive too little recognition, politics takes the concerns of the self-employed seriously, Germany is an entrepreneur-friendly country); attitudes towards the state and society based on opposing positions (scale of 7: state should guarantee comprehensive social security for citizens vs. leave it to citizens to take personal responsibility, state intervention in the economy vs. free enterprise, state should support people in emergency situations through no fault of their own for a certain period of time vs. balance between rich and poor, economy must make profits vs. benefit the common good, right of the state to restrict citizens´ freedom to protect against crime vs. protection of citizens´ freedom from state intervention, preferred social system: strong political leadership vs. democratic citizen participation, performance principle vs. solidarity principle, education policy as equal opportunity vs. promotion of elites, dependence of social progress on origin and property vs. performance, lower taxes and contributions vs. more welfare benefits); party sympathy.

Demography: age; sex; federal state; school education: highest general school leaving certificate; vocational training: type of vocational training qualification; self-assessment of social class; net household income; city size; size of household.

Additionally coded: ID; weighting factor.