Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP) in nine European Countries, 2009-2012

PIDOP, Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation, was a multinational research project that was funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. The project examined the processes which influence democratic ownership and participation in nine European countries - Belgium, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Italy, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey. The project drew on the disciplines of Psychology, Politics, Sociology, Social Policy and Education to examine macro-level contextual factors (including historical, political, electoral, economic and policy factors), proximal social factors (including familial, educational and media factors) and psychological factors (including motivational, cognitive, attitudinal and identity factors) which facilitated and/or inhibited civic and political engagement and participation.
The project had a distinct focus on the psychology of the individual citizen and the psychological processes through which macro-level contextual factors and proximal social factors exert their effects upon citizens' civic and political engagement and participation. Young people, women, minorities and migrants were examined as four specific groups at risk of political disengagement. The research explored the differences as well as the overlap between civic and political engagement, and both direct and representative participation. The data were collected in three phases: Phase 1 (Focus Groups), Phase 2 (Individual Interviews), and Phase 3 (Quantitative Survey). Qualitative focus group and interview data are not included as part of this data collection at this time. Data included as part of this collection includes one dataset with 8197 cases for 198 variables. Demographic variables include: age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, education-level, occupation, marital status, children, income, and political ideology.