International Social Justice Project, 1991 and 1996

The International Social Justice Project is a collaborative effort among 13 countries to conduct a comparative study of popular perceptions of economic and social justice in advanced industrialized nations. Countries which participated in the 1991 and 1996 survey included Bulgaria, East Germany, Estonia, Great Britain, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, the United States, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia (formerly known as Czechoslovakia in the 1991 survey). West Germany and East Germany, during its transition to a democracy, were surveyed in 1991. The survey, which employed standardized survey procedures and data collection instruments across all countries, focused on normative social justice concepts such as entitlement, equality of economic opportunity, and reward distribution. The study design provides analysis of normative justice at a micro level, involving respondents' evaluation of justice or rewards received by individuals and small groups, and at a macro level, through the evaluation of fairness of reward distribution at the aggregate or societal level. Variables in the dataset include demographic characteristics of the respondent, such as age, sex, marital status, education, employment, and occupation. In the 1991 survey, occupation has been classified utilizing the following coding schemes: the International Standard Classification of Occupations and Goldthorpe's Class Categories, with the addition of the English-language version of the German "Berufsstellungen" in the 1996 survey. Respondents were also queried about actual and desired income, what factors respondents believe determine level of pay and their fairness, dependence on pension or social welfare programs, satisfaction with the sociopolitical system, perceived and/or preferred role of the government in job allocation, and standard of living.