The German Welfare Survey

Welfare Survey 1998

The Welfare Surveys 1978-1993

Questionnaire Programme of the Welfare Survey

Time Series: Results of the Welfare Surveys 1978-1998

Literature

The Welfare Survey 1998

The latest wave of the welfare survey has the title "Welfare Survey 1998: Welfare Development, Integration, and Exclusion in Intra-German and European Comparison". As its predecessors it is part of a project that was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and was jointly realised by the Social Structure and Social Reporting Unit of the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) and GESIS-ZUMA's Social Indicators Research Centre. The project managers are Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Zapf (primary researcher), Dr. Roland Habich (WZB) and Dr. Heinz Herbert Noll (ZUMA). Like in the earlier waves, the fieldwork for the Welfare Survey 1998 was conducted by Infratest Burke Social Research. In 1998 for the first time the survey was conducted using CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interviews). Fieldwork ended December 15th 1998. Altogether 3 042 personal interviews were conducted. Among those 2 007 were carried out in the Old Federal Countries (West) while 1 035 took place in the New Federal Countries (East). In the 1998 wave, questions regarding objective and subjective indicators in public as well as in private life were replicated along with global measures of subjective welfare and attitudes that are relevant for welfare issues. On the innovative side of this survey, groups of questions on new concepts of welfare were introduced, which focus on processes of exclusion and integration and on the perceived quality of social institutions.

An English  version of the German Welfare Survey 1998's questionnaire in PDF format can be found on our pages.

The Welfare Surveys 1978-1993

The Welfare Survey is a representative survey which was specifically designed to measure individual welfare and perceived quality of life. It is designed to observe the development of objective living conditions and subjective well-being in different life domains. It does so by analysing the connections between suitable indicator-variables for these conditions and by focusing on their development over time. The Welfare Survey thus offers a database which is particularly suited for two tasks: to analyse welfare disparities and to observe the adjustment of living conditions in West and East Germany.

The Welfare Survey has been developed within the framework of the Special Research Division 3 (Sonderforschungsbereich 3) "Micro-Foundations of Social Politics" of the Universities of Frankfurt/Main  and Mannheim. It has been carried out four times in the former Federal Republic - in 1978, 1980, 1984, and 1988. The base population of the Welfare Survey were those persons in the German resident population who lived in private households and were 18 years of age or older. The sample size of the 1978 to 1988 waves was between 2000 and 2500 respondents. Since replication (and thus comparison over time) is one of the major tasks of the Welfare Survey, a large part of all waves is made up by the same questions. In addition to that every wave focuses on specific topics that are new and of current interest. In October/November 1990, immediately after German reunification the Social Structure and Social Reporting Unit of the Social Science Research Center Berlin conducted the Welfare Survey-East on the territory of the former GDR. This was done in order to add baseline information on the new countries that were comparable to those available for the old territory of the FRG to the welfare survey programme immediately after reunification. The sample-size of the Welfare Survey-East was 735.

The German Welfare Survey 1993 was conducted in spring 1993. It was part of a joint project of the Social Structure and Social Reporting Unit of the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) and the Social Indicators Research Centre of GESIS-ZUMA, which was sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). It was the first Welfare Survey to be conducted in both, the Eastern and the Western part of the country. The Welfare Survey 1993 had a sample size of 3 062 respondents, of which 2 046 were West- and 1 016 East Germans. For the first time, the questionnaire of the Welfare Survey 1993 included a supplementary section that was used to collect information on individual lifestyles.

The questionnaires and question programmes of the German Welfare Survey are available on our pages (partly in German).

Literature

Duttenhöfer, Stefan and Schröder, Helmut. The Welfare Surveys 1978-1993 - Summary of Variables (Die Wohlfahrtssurveys 1978 1993 - Variablenübersicht). Zuma Technical Report 94/11

Glatzer, Wolfgang and Zapf, Wofgang. (Hrsg.): Quality of Life in the Federal Republic. Objective Living Conditions and Subjective Feelings of Well-Bring (Lebensqualität in der Bundesrepublik. Objektive Lebensbedingungen und subjektives Wohlbefinden). Frankfurt/New York 1984.

Habich, R. and Noll, H.H. Objective Living Conditions and Subjective Well-Being in a United Germany (Objektive Lebensbedingungen und subjektives Wohlbefinden im vereinten Deutschland). In: Statistisches Bundesamt (Federal Statistical Office) (Ed.): Data Report 1999 (Datenreport 1999). Schriftenreihe der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung Bonn, Bd. 365, Bonn 2000.