ALLBUS 2010 (Study-No. 4610, German version; Study-No. 4612 English version)

Contents:

Social monitoring of trends in attitudes, behavior, and societal change in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The main topics in 2010 are:
 

1. Importance of job characteristics
2. Social inequality and the welfare state
3. Political attitudes
4. Economy
5. Social networks and social capital
6. Ethnocentrism and minorities
7. Attitudes relating to the process of German unification
8. Other topics
9. ALLBUS-Demography
10. Data on the interview (paradata)
11. Social Inequality IV (ISSP)
12. Environment III (ISSP)
13. Added value

Topics:

1. Importance of job characteristics: preferred job characteristics (security, income, career opportunities, prestige, free time, interesting work, autonomy, responsibility, human contact, charitableness, social utility).
2. Social inequality and the welfare state: self-assessment of social class and classification on a top-bottom-scale; fair share in standard of living; evaluation of personal success in life; assessment of access to education; perceived prerequisites for success in society; income differences as incentive to achieve; acceptance of social differences and support of the welfare state; attitudes towards expansion or cuts in social services; perceived strength of conflicts between social groups; social pessimism and orientation towards the future (anomia).
3. Political attitudes: political interest; postmaterialism (importance of law and order, fighting rising prices, free expression of opinions, and influence on governmental decisions); self-placement on left-right continuum.
4. Economy: assessments of the present and future economic situation in Germany; assessment of present and future personal economic situation.
5. Social networks and social capital: interpersonal trust; trust and reciprocity in social relations; membership status of respondent in various clubs and organizations; friends and acquaintances (ego-centered networks), including information on: gender, age, kinship or type of relationship, school education, employment, occupational position, occupational group, voting behavior, current citizenship and country of origin, spatial distance between alter and ego, comparative economic situation; quality and quantity of contacts, mutual familiarity between friends or acquaintances.
6. Ethnocentrism and minorities: scale of attitudes towards foreigners and contacts with foreigners within the family, at work, in the neighborhood, or among friends; opinion on dual citizenship and on equal rights for foreigners; pride in being a German.
7. Attitudes relating to the process of German unification: attitude towards the demand for increased willingness to make sacrifices in the West and more patience in the East; unification is advantageous, for East and West respectively; future of the East depends on the willingness of eastern Germans to make an effort; strangeness of citizens in the other part of Germany; performance pressure in the new states; attitude towards dealing with the Stasi-past of individuals; evaluation of socialism as an idea.
8. Other topics: family as a prerequisite for happiness; marriage in case of steady partnership or if child was born; overall health; physical and psychological shape during the last four weeks; Internet use.
9. ALLBUS-Demography:
   • Details about the respondent: attractiveness of respondent, month and year of birth, age, gender, geographical origin, citizenship(s) (nationality), number of citizenships, original citizenship, school education, vocational training, employment status, details about current and former occupation respectively, affiliation to public service, fixed-term or permanent employment contract, working hours per week (primary and secondary job), supervisory functions, fear of unemployment or loss of business, length of unemployment, status of non-employment, date of termination of full- or part-time employment, marital status, marital biography, co-habitation with spouse or steady partner, lived with parents when child, age when leaving parental home, respondent's income, type of dwelling, self-description of place of residence, length of residence, distance to previous place of residence, self-assessment of religiousness, religious denomination, frequency of church attendance, voting intention (Sonntagsfrage), participation in last federal elections, overall life satisfaction, place of residence (federal state, administrative district, size of municipality, BIK-type of municipality).
   • Details about respondent's current spouse: month and year of birth, age, school education, vocational training, employment status, details about current occupation, affiliation to public service, fear of unemployment or loss of business status of non-employment.
   • Details about respondent's steady partner: month and year of birth, age, school education, vocational training, employment status, details about current occupation, affiliation to public service, fear of unemployment or loss of business status of non-employment.
   • Details about respondent's parents: school education, vocational training, details about parents' occupation.
   • Description of household: size of household, household income, number of persons older than 17 in household (reduced size of household).
   • Details about household members: family relation to respondent, gender, month and year of birth, age, marital status.
   • Details about children not living in the household: number of children not living in the household, gender, year of birth, age.
10. Data on the interview (paradata): Date of interview; beginning and end of interview; length of interview; presence of other persons during interview: presence of spouse, partner or children during interview, presence of other relatives during interview; interference of other persons in the course of the interview; willingness to cooperate and reliability of information from respondent; respondent followed interview on screen; participation in other surveys over the past year; willingness to participate in follow-up survey; willingness to provide e-mail address; participation in accompanying ISSP-interviews; details about respondent's residential building and assessment of respondent's neighborhood; reachability of respondent; willingness to participate; number of attempts to contact the respondent; release-id.
    Details about the interviewer: gender, age, school education, length of experience as an interviewer, identification number.
11. Social inequality IV (ISSP): perceived prerequisites for success in society; attitudes towards the welfare state and towards social differences; estimation of average earnings in occupational groups and estimation of appropriate earnings; social justice; self-classification on a top-bottom-scale; occupational status compared to father's; estimation of own pay's fairness; perceived and preferred type of society; parents' occupational group; respondent's occupational mobility; worth of family assets; respondent's work ethic in school.
12. Environment III (ISSP): the two most urgent problems of the country; attitudes towards the role of private business and government intervention; postmaterialism; interpersonal trust and trust in politicians; role of science in society; most relevant environmental issue for country and own family; estimate of own knowledge about environmental problems and their solutions; attitudes on the role of science and economic growth regarding environmental issues; willingness to make personal sacrifices to protect environment; assessment of efficacy of own actions to protect environment; assessment of relative danger of environmental problems; attitudes on measures to enforce environmental goals; preferred source of energy for country; environmental policies in a global context; own actions to protect environment; knowledge about reasons for climate change; details about the respondent (years in school, employment, , type of employer, employment status); details about spouse or steady partner (employment; working hours per week; supervisory functions in job, employment status), self-classification on a top-bottom-scale.
13. Added value: Inglehart-Index; International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO 1968, 1988); occupational prestige (according to Treiman); Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale (SIOPS, according to Ganzeboom), International Socio-economic Index of Occupational Status (ISEI, according to Ganzeboom); magnitude prestige (according to Wegener); class position (according to Goldthorpe); occupational metaclassification (according to Terwey); classification of private households (according to Porst and Funk);family typology; transformation weight for analyses on household level; east-west design weight.

Total Population and Sample:

• Universe sampled: Federal Republic of Germany
• Sample of individuals: Two stage disproportionate random sample in western Germany (incl. West Berlin) and eastern Germany (incl. East Berlin) of all persons (German and non-German) who resided in private households on the day of the interview and were born before 1 January 1992. In the first sample stage municipalities (Gemeinden) in western Germany and municipalities in eastern Germany were selected with a probability proportional to their number of adult residents; in the second sample stage individual persons were selected at random from the municipal registers of residents.
  Targeted individuals who did not have adequate knowledge of German to conduct the interview were treated as systematic unit non-responses.

Method of Data Collection:

• Personal interview with standardized questionnaire (CAPI - Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing).
• Two additional questionnaires (CASI - Computer Assisted Self-Interviewing) for ISSP (split questionnaire design).

Primary Sampling Units / Sample-Points:

Response Rate:

Publications:

• Bens, Arno 2006:
  Zur Auswertung haushaltsbezogener Merkmale mit dem ALLBUS 2004, in: ZA-Information 59: 143 - 156.
• Blohm, Michael 2006:
  Datenqualität durch Stichprobenverfahren bei der Allgemeinen Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften - ALLBUS, in: Frank Faulbaum und Christof Wolf (eds.), Stichprobenqualität in Bevölkerungsumfragen, Bonn: Informationszentrum Sozialwissenschaften 2006: 37 - 54.
• Koch, Achim and Martina Wasmer 2004:
  Der ALLBUS als Instrument zur Untersuchung sozialen Wandels: Eine Zwischenbilanz nach 20 Jahren, in: Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck, Martina Wasmer and Achim Koch (eds.), Sozialer und politischer Wandel in Deutschland. Analysen mit ALLBUS-Daten aus zwei Jahrzehnten, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften: 13 - 42.
• Terwey, Michael 2000:
  ALLBUS: A German General Social Survey, in: Schmollers Jahrbuch 120: 151 - 158.
• Terwey, Michael 2003:
  Zum aktuellen Wandel im Zugriff auf ALLBUS-Materialien und zur ALLBUS-Nutzung in Publikationen, in: ZA-Information 53: 195 - 202.
• Terwey, Michael 2013:
  Oversamples, Units of Analysis, and the Topic of Data Transformation, in: Michael Terwey and Horst Baumann: Variable Report ALLBUS / German General Social Survey Cumulation 1980-2010. Study-No. 4576. Cologne: GESIS, GESIS - Variable Reports; No. 2013/2: x – xvii.

The known literature using ALLBUS-Data is documented in the ALLBUS-Bibliography. This bibliography can be searched online at the GESIS web presence.

Further Notes:

• Respondents from the area of the new federal states are oversampled.
• A second version of this data set (600 variables) with a shortened demography module is additionally available as ALLBUScompact 2010 (Study-No. 4611, German Version; Study-No. 4613, English version).