General Population Survey of the Social Sciences ALLBUS 1986 (Non-Response Study)

Accompanying methods investigation for the ALLBUS 1986.

Topics: The data set consists of 4 major parts:

1. The first part of the data set contains information on interviewers
employed in the main survey to accomplish the 5278 intended units of the
sample. Information on sample cases is assigned to each interviewer. The
information for an interviewer is thus contained in the data set several
times corresponding to the frequency of his deployment: length of activity
as interviewer; number of hours available in February 1986 for interviewing;
preferred day of interview; preferred time of interview; most important
criteria for establishing a successful contact and conducting an interview.

2. Contact protocols for the 5278 units of the master sample:
identification of interviewer; number of contact attempts; willingness
to participate in the interview of the household or of the target
person; availability of the target person; reasons for non-completion;
difficulties in completing the interview; reasons for non-completion of
the interview; age and sex of the person providing information;
relation of the person providing information to the target person;
arranging an appointment with target person; reasons for insufficient
willingness to cooperate; sex and age of persons not willing to
cooperate and their relation to the target person; refusal of interview
after consultation with others; friendly or unfriendly rejection of the
interview; type of interview refusal.

3. Selection of variables from the content part of the ALLBUS main
survey for the 3094 cases done as oral interviews: judgement on one´s
own and general current economic situation; political interest;
eligibility to vote, election participation and behavior at the polls
in the last Federal Parliament election; detailed encoding of
occupation according to the ISCO-code system; time worked each week;
year of birth; memberships; sex.

Interviewer rating: willingness to cooperate of respondent.

Also encoded were: city size; length of interview; sex of interviewer;
age of interviewer and primary occupational activity.

4. Supplementary telephone survey of non-responses in main survey as
well as of a sample of participants in the main investigation
(altogether 1077 respondents):

4a. contact protocols on telephone survey: identification of
interviewer; willingness to participate in the interview of the target
person; difficulties in completing the interview; reasons for
non-completion; reasons for not achieving the interview; sex and age of
person not willing to cooperate and their relation to target person;
type of interview refusal.

4b. supplementary telephone survey: judgement on one´s own and general
current economic situation; frequency of contact with persons not
personally known; attitude to opinion polls (scale); full or part-time
employment; detailed encoding of occupation according to the ISCO-code
system; night or shift work; year of birth; memberships; honorary
offices and functions; political interest; election participation,
eligibility to vote and behavior at the polls in the last Federal
Parliament election.

Interviewer rating: sex and estimated age of respondent; linguistic
expression of respondent (dialect).

The size of the city was also encoded.