Jena Study on Social Change and Human Development (Adults) 2008

The study deals with individual capacities of coping with experienced
requirements of social change. Broadly speaking, this refers to the
challenges individuals are facing when macro-contextual conditions of
life are changing.

Education/vocatioinal training, gainful employment, willingness to
work, marital status, way of life (single, in
relation/married-cohabiting, in relation/married-not cohabiting),
children (age of children), goals in life, satisfaction with life in
general and specific areas of life, handling of challenges in life,
self-evaluation, changes in work life, easy/hard finding a job, changes
in education/vocational training, personal motivation/commitment,
self-perception, changes in family life, personal coping strategies
with change (family, work, education/vocational training,
relationship), reaction to changes in everyday life (challenged:
religious belief, role of political parties, fewer guidelines
concerning right or wrong, customs/traditions from foreign cultures,
political/religious extremism); financial situation, overtime
(night/weekend shifts); free choice in type of relation; pursuit of
further education (more of it in leisure time), more offers for further
education available, increased importance of appearance/fitness, higher
level of independence and autonomy in work, precautions for old age,
workload eased by technology, easier to live according to own moral
concepts, job requires better interpersonal skills, new possibilities
due to new media, longer commute to work, leisure activities no longer
affordable, greater effort to attain standard of living, more
discretion towards other forms of life, learn more for job (languages,
technology), prepared to adapt to changes today; personal
characteristics: routine important in life, optimism/pessimism,
psychological well-being, self-esteem, problem-solving skills,
curiousness towards new things, comfort, leisure time and its
perception, role of others in life, role of personal environment,
activities in/member of associations, view on/perception of fellow
local inhabitants; quality/characterization of partnership; political
participation and interest, follow local daily press, neighbors,
activities with neighbors/other locals; state of health
(mental/psychiatric treatment), assessment of own health; recent
sensations: enthusiastic, happy, strong, proud, interested, alert,
animated, decide, attentive, active; suffering from: thoughts about
suicide, feeling of loneliness, melancholy, indifference, hopelessness
with regard to future, feeling of being worthless; experienced
following events: moving out of parental home, having sexual
encounters, parenthood, fully starting work, smoking cigarettes
regularly, no curfew; other changes/events that happen in life:
(parent’s) serious financial problems, death of a beloved person,
severe injury/sickness (of family member), victim of a crime, domestic
violence/sexual harassment, legal sentence/fine/imprisonment, severe
problems with someone close to you, lost something valuable, unplanned
parenthood, serious problems with educational/vocational training,
(child has) school problems, child’s/parent’s divorce/separation;
alcohol consumption (started drinking alcohol, being drunk, on how many
days drinking beer/wine/spirituous beverages), drug consumption; job
history, kind of job/job group; average weekly working hours (including
overtime), for how long employed in current job, temporary/unlimited
contract, development of job position within the last 12 months,
additional jobs (how many hours/week); registered unemployed/seeking
work, receiving unemployment/welfare benefits, last job/job category,
last time employed; willingness to move for job; categorization of
career development/vocational training (models), grade point average;
own household, renting, how many people in household (including
respondent), who else is living in household (father, mother,
step-father, step-mother, father in law, mother in law,
brothers/sisters, stepbrother/-sister, spouse, partner, own children,
stepchildren, adopted children, grandfather, grandmother, other
relatives, flat/housemate in shared accommodation, fellow pupil,
colleague/fellow trainee/fellow student, other non-relatives; personal
net income, own household, number of people contributing to household
income, net income of household, means for maintenance (own occupation,
occasional paid work, unemployment benefit, welfare benefit, social
assistance, support from parents, maternity benefits,
scholarship/grants/stipends, child-raising-allowance), changes in
income over past 12 months, financial support from parents (and
extent), state responsible for securing a solid income, state
responsible for providing jobs for everyone; contact with
state-governed inistitutions/facilities/organizations concerning social
security: employment office, social welfare office, youth welfare
office, family consulting service, marriage/family/life counseling
center, counseling centers for substance abuse, advisory service for
debtors, other; how often claimed financial state support; German
citizenship, federal state in which respondent was born, federal state
that had biggest influence on respondent’s life, gender, age
(integers), age categories, age by gender, weight.

Demography: sex; year of birth; age; marital status; number of
children.

Additionally encoded: site of interview, consent to further
participation in survey, sample, month of survey.