Darmstadt Study (Elementary Schools)

Family and living conditions as well as conduct and attitudes of young people.

Besides a survey compositions were evaluated and encoded for content analysis.

Topics:
1. Content of the questionnaire: father missing, in captivity or deceased; occupation and activity of father as well as of mother; social origins; working hours of mother; number of siblings; position in sibling sequence; person responsible for housework and child care; one´s own child´s bed; local residency; refugee; bombed out.

2. Content analysis encoding of schoolchildren´s compositions with 5 different topics: 1. playing, 2. how I spend the day, 3. my life in school, 4. how we live at home, 5. what gives me the most fun and what I do not like (each child received
only one of the topics).

Encoded was: number of statements about father, mother, family, siblings, friends, school, teachers, playing, residence, Organizations; critical faculty; number of statements about prohibitions, desires and pleasure-oriented emotional states; adventures reported; formal recording of type as well as extent of report; number of mistakes and script; optimistic statements about the future; number of mentions of playing and manners of play as well as toys; mention of money, food and social situation.

On topic of playing: description of the play situation and preferred playmate.

Course of the day: occupations during the course of the day.

School: favorite subjects; the route to school; judgement on teachers; criticism of school friends; criticism of material conditions at school; mention of punishments; judgement on the school.

At home: occupation with siblings and relationship to them; desire for siblings; pocket-money and use of money; playmates and friends; helping in household.

Pleasure and fun: pleasure with manual activity and particular inclinations; sympathy with others; concerns and desires; political observations.

Future plans: desired occupation of respondent and concepts of parents; further school attendance and desires for life in the future; marrying and having children; assumed attitude of parents to personal plans.

Demography: age; sex; religious denomination; size of household; place of birth; place of residence; school; class.