The Enviromental Protection Study 1995 (Population)

The Enviromental Protection Study 1995 was conducted in May 1995 on a representative sample of members of twelve of the most central environmental organisations in Norway, as well as on a sample of the Norwegian population. It is published as two separate surveys, one organisation part and one part that is representative for the entire population. Here, the data from the latter survey are presented. The objective of the Enviromental Protection Study 1995 is to obtain a clearer image of the varieties that exists within the field of environmental protection. The survey deals mostly with environmental protection attitudes and behaviour. Central questions deal with attitudes towards science and technology, risk assessment and humans, animals and nature- and people's place in nature. What are the respondents' world view, what is their understanding of the problem, and how do their vision of the "good society" look like? How high is the level of knowledge regarding nature and environment and in what degree are the environmental problems perceived as solvable within the current political system? The survey is not just important for the gathering of knowledge about attitudes and values, it should also form the basis for statements concerning the shaping and functioning of policy within the area of environmental protection and give foundation for theory comparison and development. The survey is part of the project "Voluntary Organisation and Environmental Protection Politics" at the LOS center in Bergen. The LOS research on this field takes the environmental organisations (meso level) as a starting point, and analyses the environmental organisations' roles in relation to the political system (macro) as well as the organisation members' values and attitudes in relation to the rest of the population (micro). The Enviromental Protection Study 1995 contributes with a datamaterial that opens for analyses on several levels. The data material is collected on membership level in the organisations, but since there has been drawn indepedent samples within each organisation, one can also analyse the organisations separately. In addition, the different organisations are both comparable to eachother and to the overall population. Thus, a certain flexibility in the usage of data is allowed. The survey is unique, in the sense that there are no other national surveys of similar breadth, neither thematically nor in regards to subsamples. The Environmental Protection Survey 1995 (Organisation Members) and the The Enviromental Protection Study 1995 (Population) can be combined in an analysis file, in order to compare relationships between the population and members in the environmental organisations. In such a combination, however, one must be aware the effect this has on the representativity of the dataset.