International Social Survey Programme: Environment I-IV Cumulation

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 the environment, climate change and environmental protection.<br>Agreement with different statements (private enterprise is the best way to solve economic problems, government´s responsibility to reduce income differences between people with high incomes and those with low incomes); most important issue and next most important issue for the country; most important environmental problem for the country as a whole (air pollution, chemicals and pesticides, water shortage, water pollution, nuclear waste, domestic waste disposal, climate change, genetically modified foods, using up our natural resources); country’s highest and next highest priority; amount of trust in people; agreement with different statements (modern science will solve our environmental problems with little change to our way of life, believe too often in science, science does more harm than good, we worry too much about the future of the environment and not enough about prices and jobs today, almost everything we do in modern life harms the environment, people worry too much about human progress harming the environment, in order to protect the environment the country needs economic growth, it is right to use animals for medical testing if it might save human lives, economic growth always harms the environment, the earth simply cannot continue to support population growth at its present rate); Nature is sacred; willingness to pay much higher prices and much higher taxes as well as to accept cuts in standard of living in order to protect the environment; attitude towards the environment and environmental protection (It is just too difficult for someone like me to do much about the environment, I do what is right for the environment, even when it costs more money or takes more time, there are more important things to do in life than protect the environment, there is no point in doing what I can for the environment unless others do the same, many of the claims about environmental threats are exaggerated, I find it hard to know whether the way I live is helpful or harmful to the environment, environmental problems have a direct effect on my everyday life); knowledge about manner of functioning of antibiotics as destructive agent for bacteria or virus; understanding the theory of evolution; artificially produced chemicals as cause for cancer; knowledge of the danger of death from radioactivity; climate change is caused by a hole in atmosphere; climate change by use of coal or oil or gas; environmental problems have direct effect on everyday life; assessment of the hazardousness of various factors potentially affecting the environment: air pollution caused by cars and by industry, from pesticides and chemicals used in farming, from water pollution, from a rise in the world´s temperature caused by climate change (greenhouse effect), from the modification of genes of certain crops, and nuclear power stations; government, ordinary or business should decide how to protect the environment; country is doing the right amount, more or less than enough to protect environment; attitude towards international agreements for environmental problems that each country should be made to follow; agreement with poorer countries to make less effort than richer countries to protect the environment; economic progress in country will slow down unless we look after the environment better; best way of getting national business and industry as well as people and their families to protect the environment (heavy fines for businesses/ for people that damage the environment, use the tax system to reward businesses that/ people who protect the environment, more information and education for businesses/ people about the advantages of protecting the environment); frequency of special efforts to sort glass or tins or plastic or newspapers for recycling; frequency of special efforts to buy fruit and vegetables without pesticides or chemicals; frequency of cut back on driving a car for environmental reasons; frequency of avoiding buying certain products for environmental reasons; member of a group to preserve environment; personal environmental political activities in the last five years (signed a petition about an environmental issue, given money to an environmental group, taken part in a protest or demonstration about an environmental issue); believe in God.

Demography: sex; age; marital status; steady life partner; education: years of schooling; highest education level; currently, formerly, or never in paid work (respondent and partner); current employment status (respondent and partner); hours worked weekly (respondent and partner); occupation (ISCO 2008) (respondent and partner); supervising function at work (respondent and partner); number of other employees supervised; type of organization: for-profit vs. non-profit and public vs. private; trade union membership; household size; child in household; party affiliation (left-right); participation in last election; attendance of religious services; religious main groups (derived); Top Bottom self-placement; subjective social class; place of living urban – rural; household income groups (derived); country specific region.

Additionally coded: ID number of respondent; unique cumulation respondent ID number; Case substitution flag; date of interview (year, month, day); ISSP Module year; country; country sample; country sample year; weighting factor; administrative mode of data collection.