International Social Survey Programme: Religion I-III - ISSP 1991-1998-2008

The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a continuous programme of cross-national collaboration running annual surveys on topics important for the social sciences. The programme started in 1984 with four founding members - Australia, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States – and has now grown to almost 50 member countries from all over the world. As the surveys are designed for replication, they can be used for both, cross-national and cross-time comparisons. Each ISSP module focuses on a specific topic, which is repeated in regular time intervals. Please, consult the documentation for details on how the national ISSP surveys are fielded. The present study focuses on questions about religion and religious identity.<br>The release of the cumulated ISSP ´Religion´ modules for the years 1991, 1998 and 2008 consists of two separate datasets: ZA5070 and ZA5071. This documentation deals with the main dataset ZA5070. It contains all the cumulated variables, while the supplementary data file ZA5071 contains those variables that could not be cumulated for various reasons. However, they can be matched easily to the cumulated file if necessary. A comprehensive overview on the contents, the structure and
basic coding rules of both data files can be found in the following guide:

<a href=https://access.gesis.org/dbk/20685 target=_blank>Guide for the ISSP ´Religion´ cumulation of the years 1991, 1998 and 2008 </a>

Religion I-III:

Assessment of personal happiness; responsibility of government for providing jobs and reduction of the difference between rich and poor; attitudes towards pre-marital sexual intercourse; attitudes towards committed adultery; attitudes towards homosexual relationships between adults; attitudes towards abortion in case of serious disability or illness of the baby or low income of the family; attitudes towards gender roles in marriage; attitude towards tax fraud and incorrect information to get benefits from government; trust in institutions (parliament, business and industry, churches and religious organizations, courts and the legal system, schools and the educational system); attitudes towards the influence of religious leaders on voters and government; judgement on the power of churches and religious organizations; doubt or firm belief in God (deism, scale); belief in: a life after death, heaven, hell, religious miracles; attitudes towards the Bible (or appropriate holy book); attitudes towards a higher truth and towards meaning of life (scale: God is concerned with every human being personally, little that people can do to change the course of their lives (fatalism), life is meaningful only because God exists, life does not serve any purpose, life is only meaningful if someone provides the meaning himself); we each make our own fate; turning point in life and new commitment to religion; religious preference (affiliation) of mother, father and spouse/partner; religion respondent was raised in; frequency of church attendance (of attendance in religious
services) of father and mother when the respondent was a child; personal frequency of church attendance at the age of 11-12; frequency of prayers and participation in religious activities; self-assessment as religious; belief in lucky charms, fortune tellers, faith healers and horoscopes; born again experience; concept of God (semantic
differential scale: mother - father, master - spouse, judge - lover, friend - king); world image: much evil vs. much good, man is good vs. corrupt; people can be trusted; attitudes towards the benefits of science and religion (scale: modern science does more harm than good, too much trust in science and not enough in religious faith, religions
bring more conflicts than peace, intolerance of people with very strong religious beliefs); attitude towards truth in religion (very little truth in any religion, basic truths in many religions or truth only in one religion); attitude if law conflicts with religious principles.

Demography: sex; age; marital status; steady life partner; years of schooling; highest education level; current employment status (respondent and partner); hours worked weekly; occupation (ISCO 1988) (respondent and partner); supervising function at work; working for private or public sector or self-employed; number of employees; trade union membership; size of household; household composition; party affiliation (left-right); participation in last election; attendance of religious services; religious main groups; subjective social class; region (country-specific).

Additionally coded: weighting factor.