German Internet Panel, Wave 40 (March 2019)

The German Internet Panel (GIP) is an infrastructure project. The GIP serves to collect data on individual attitudes and preferences that are relevant for political and economic decision-making processes.

The questionnaire contains numerous experimental variations in the survey instruments. For further information, please refer to the study documentation.

Topics: Environmental attitudes and behaviour: acceptance of higher prices for environmentally friendly products; acceptance of energy savings against climate change; frequency of purchasing environmentally friendly products; frequency of energy savings; assessment of the probability of contributing to environmental protection by purchasing environmentally friendly products; assessment of the probability of reducing climate change by limiting personal energy consumption; recall of the given answers to the above questions; certainty of one´s own assessments.

Political attitudes: Agreement on political positions (experiment to test the effects of differently verbalised response scales): the state should take measures to reduce income disparities; workers need strong trade unions to protect their working conditions and wages; large income disparities are justified in order to adequately reward different talents and achievements; for a society to be just, differences in people´s living standards should be small; social benefits lead to more equality in society.

EU: Self-classification for European unification; classification of the views of parties to European unification (CDU/CSU, SPD, AfD, FDP, Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen, Die Linke; left-right classification of the European Parliament; intention to vote in the next European elections; advocacy of abolishing the EU if most people do not agree with EU decisions; satisfaction with EU services; agreement with various statements: bad for the German economy or cultural life in Germany is undermined when people come from other countries to live here (nativism); good understanding and assessment of important EU policy issues or politicians in the EU care about what people think (internal/external effectiveness).

Possession of mobile phone, computer or laptop and tablet computer; mobile phone is smartphone; smartphone type; use of mobile phone, computer or laptop and tablet computer to access the internet; use of another device (e.g. e-book reader) to access the internet; use of social networks (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing) on the internet or as mobile app.

Conjoint Experiment on preferred pension level for a fictitious person with selected attributes (name, income, contribution years, children, partner´s co-supply)

Conjoint experiment with three decisions on the preferred level of unemployment benefit (ALG I, ALG II, sanctions in the case of ALG II) for a fictitious person with selected attributes (name, age, reason for unemployment, motivation, children, date).

Experiment on the preferred pension reform from different reform alternatives with different attributes (retirement age, pension level, contribution rate and on the retirement without deductions before reaching retirement age).

Experiment on the responsibility of the state for (free) child care in day-care centres with different question text (for children of all parents, for children of working parents, for children of single parents, for children of migrants).

Debt brake: Preferred timing for the debt brake of the federal and state governments; evaluation of the debt brake; probability of compliance with the debt brake from 2020 by the state of the main residence; opinion on compliance with the debt brake if other states do not comply with it; state of the main residence in the state fiscal equalization system recipient state or donor state; tax evasion: estimated extent of tax evasion in Germany in percent; opinion on the justifiability of tax evasion.

Demography: sex; age (year of birth, categorized); highest educational degree; highest professional qualification; marital status; household size; employment status; German citizenship; frequency of private Internet usage; federal state; migration background.

Additionally coded: Respondent ID; household ID, GIP; person ID (within the household); year of recruitment (2012, 2014, 2018); interview date; current online status; assignment to experimental groups.

Questionnaire evaluation (interesting, varied, relevant, long, difficult, too personal); assessment of the survey as a whole; respondent made further comments on the questionnaire.