International Social Survey Programme: Health and Health Care II - ISSP 2021

Satisfaction with life (happiness); confidence in the national health care system; justification of better health care for people with higher incomes; agreement with various statements on the healthcare system (People use health care services more than necessary, the government should provide only limited health care services, in general, the health care system in the country is inefficient); willingness to pay higher taxes to improve the level of health care for all people in the country; attitude towards the access to publicly funded health care for people without citizenship of the country and even if they behave in ways that damage their health; in the country it is easier or harder to get access to health care for rich people than for poor people, for old people than for young people, for women than for men, for citizens of the country than for people who do not hold country´s citizenship); opinion on causes why people suffer from severe health problems (because they behaved in ways that damaged their health, because of the environment they are exposed to at work or where they live, because of their genes, because they are poor); alternative/ traditional or folk medicine provides better solutions for health problems than mainstream/ Western traditional medicine; assessment of doctors in general in the country (doctors can be trusted, the medical skills of doctors are not as good as they should be, doctors care more about their earnings than about their patients); frequency of internet use on any device (such as computers, tablets and smartphones) to look for health or medical information during the past 12 months; frequency of internet use to look for information on the following topics during the past 12 months: information on healthy lifestyle, information related to anxiety, stress, or similar problems, information on vaccinations; agreement with the following statements: During the past 12 months, information on the internet affected my health behaviour in a positive way, information on the internet helped me understand what a doctor tried to explain to me; the internet is useful to help people decide if their symptoms are serious enough to go to the doctor, the internet is useful to check that the doctor is giving people appropriate advice, it is not easy to distinguish between reliable and unreliable health information on the internet; attitude towards vaccinations (overall, vaccinations do more harm than good, it is better to develop immunity by getting ill than having a vaccination); frequency of difficulties with work or household activities because of health problems, bodily aches or pains, unhappiness and depression, loss of self-confidence and insuperable problems in the past four weeks; frequency of visits to/ by a doctor and an alternative/ traditional/ folk health care practitioner during the past 12 months; reasons why the respondent did not receive needed medical treatment (could not pay for it, could not take the time off work or because of other commitments, the waiting list was too long); likelihood of getting the best treatment available in the country in the case of seriously illness; satisfaction with the health care system in the country; satisfaction with treatment at the last visit to a doctor and to an alternative health care practitioner; smoker status and number of smoked cigarettes per day; frequency of drinking four or more alcoholic drinks on the same day, of strenuous physical activity for at least 20 minutes, and of eating fresh fruit or vegetables; assessment of personal health status; respondent has a long-standing illness, a chronic condition, or a disability; respondent’s height (in cm) and weight (in kg); attitude towards government’s rights in times of severe epidemics (shut down businesses and places of employment, demand that people stay at home, use digital (mobile phone) surveillance to track infected people, require people to wear face masks, and ban public gatherings); kind of personal health insurance. Optional items: Attitude towards government’s rights in times of severe epidemics (place people known to carry the disease in isolation, suspend compulsory education and close schools and kindergartens, and close borders to other countries); increased or decreased confidence in the health care system and in the government by the way the Covid-19 pandemic was handled in the country; employment situation considering own work activity before the Covid-19 pandemic and at present (e.g. I have the same job as before the pandemic, I lost my job due to the pandemic and now have a new job, I lost my job due to the pandemic and could not find a new job, etc.); change of household income since the Covid-19 pandemic; frequency of meeting extended family and friends in person compared with the time before the Covid-19 pandemic; agreement with the following statements: Most people become very overweight because they are lazy, most people who tested positive for Covid-19 contracted the virus because they were careless. Demography: Sex; age; year of birth; years of full-time schooling; education (country specific): highest completed degree of education (ISCED 2011); work status (currently, formerly, or never in paid work); hours worked weekly; employment relationship; supervision of other employees; number of other employees supervised; type of organization: for-profit vs. non-profit and public vs. private; occupation (ISCO 2008); current main status; living in steady partnership; trade union membership; religious affiliation or denomination (country specific); comparative: groups of religious affiliations; frequency of the respondent’s attendance at religious services; Top-Bottom self-placement; participation in the last general election; party the respondent voted for in the last general election (country-specific); placement of party the respondent voted for in the last general election on a left-right scale; ethnic group (country-specific); household size; composition of household: number of adults in the household; number of children above school entry age in household; number of children below school age in household; respondent’s personal income (country-specific); household income (country-specific); legal partnership status; migration background: father’s country of birth; mother’s country of birth; place of living: urban – rural; region (country-specific). Information about spouse/ partner on: work status (currently, formerly or never in paid work); hours worked weekly; employment relationship; supervision of other employees, occupation (ISCO 2008); current main status. Additionally encoded: respondent ID, case substitution flag; date of interview (year, month, day); language of the interview; mode of data collection; weight; flag variable indicating partially completed interviews; Country ISO 3166 Code; Country/ Sample ISO 3166 Code; Country/ Sample Prefix ISO 3166 Code - alphanumeric. 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 individual health and the health care system.