This is the QuestionLink page for the harmonized construct "Political Interest".
On this page, you will find:
- A construct definition, which we used to select measurement instruments from the survey programs.
- An overview of all measurement instruments for the construct across included surveys and across all survey years.
- A list of all measurement instruments with their question wording, response options, and information on where the instrument was used. Here you can select any instrument as a reference instrument and download a recoding document. This way you can recode all other instruments towards that reference instrument.
You can also download the political interest construct report with detailled information on the construct definition, the datasets we used, and the variable names by instrument, survey, and wave.
Construct definition
We selected instruments for poltical interest via the definition commonly used by surveys in the social sciences: Political interest is the subjective strength of a general interest in politics; That is a tendency to pay atttention to poltical events, developments, media content, informations, and knowledge. The question wording usually stresses a general, stable disposition instead of a time sensitive state.
Overview of all measurement instruments
Poltical interest is used by eight of the surveys included in QuestionLink. In total we harmonized seven German measurement instruments. Please note that some instruments are used by several surveys and some surveys use several different measurement instruments.
QuestionLink surveys which measured the construct
Measurement instruments by survey and year
Measurement instruments are named by the following scheme:
- The survey in QuestionLink which first used the measurement instrument.
- If there are several measurement instruments which were used first by the same survey, then instruments are differentiated with A, B, C, etc.. Letters are sorted by the number of years an instrument it was used in, starting with A for the most used.
- [x]pt for the number of response options (i.e., scale points).
The measurement instrument ALLBUS A 5pt for example was first used in the ALLBUS survey. Of both surveys first used in the ALLBUS, it was used in the most number of years (thus "A"). Lastly, it has five response options / scale points (thus "5pt").
The measurement instrument ESS 4pt, in contrast is the only instrument first used in the ESS. Thus it has no additional letter.
List of measurement instruments
Here are the seven measurement instruments for political interest, which were harmonized using the QuestionLink Engine.
With a click on "➔ use as reference instrument" you choose a reference instrument. This will download an HTML-Document, which contains recoding scripts to harmonize all other measurement instruments towards the chosen reference.
ALLBUS A 5pt
ALLBUS (19) — GESIS Panel (8) — ISSP (4) — GLES (3) |
"How strongly are you interested in politics?" very strongly • strongly • middling • not very • not at all |
| ➔ use as reference instrument |
SOEP 4pt
SOEP (34) |
„Generally speaking, how strongly are you interested in politics?“ Very strongly • strongly • not so strongly • not at all |
| ➔ use as reference instrument |
ESS 4pt
ESS (9) — NEPS (4) |
"How interested are you in politics?" very interested • quite interested • hardly interested • not at all interested |
| ➔ use as reference instrument |
EVS 4pt
EVS (4) |
„How interested would you say you are in politics?” very interested • somewhat interested • not very interested • not at all interested |
| ➔ use as reference instrument |
ISSP 4pt
ISSP (3) |
„How interested would you say you are in politics?“ very interested • fairly interested • not very interested • not at all interested |
| ➔ use as reference instrument |
ALLBUS B 10pt
ALLBUS (2) |
„How strongly are you interested in politics?“ not at all • • • • • • • • • very strongly |
| ➔ use as reference instrument |
GPanel 8pt
GPanel (2) |
„How strongly are you generally interested in politics?“ not at all • • • • • • • very strongly |
| ➔ use as reference instrument |
Recoding document revisions
We are steadily improving QuestionLink. This means that we will upload revised versions of the recoding documents from time to time. By clicking "use as reference instrument", you always download the most recent version. Below you find links with which you can view and download all past document versions. If you have previously downloaded a document, you can match the versions via the date displayed top and right in your recoding document. Revisions are limited to visual and language aspects. When we update the recoding tables themselves, we will report that specifically.