Study title

The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a continuous programme of cross-national collaboration running annual surveys on topics important for the social sciences. The programme started in 1984 with four founding members - Australia, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States – and has now grown to almost 50 member countries from all over the world. As the surveys are designed for replication, they can be used for both, cross-national and cross-time comparisons. Each ISSP module focuses on a specific topic, which is repeated in regular time intervals. Please, consult the documentation for details on how the national ISSP surveys are fielded. The present study focuses on questions about social inequality.Importance of social background, merit, discrimination, corruption and good relations as prerequisites for success in society (wealthy family, well-educated parents, good education, ambitions, hard working, knowing the right people, political connections, giving bribes, person´s race and religion, gender); attitude towards equality of educational opportunity in one´s country (corruption as criteria for social mobility, only students from the best secondary schools have a good chance to obtain a university education, only rich people can afford the costs of attending university, same chances for everyone to enter university, regardless of gender, ethnicity or social background); opinion about own salary: actual occupational earning is adequate; estimation of actual and reasonable earnings for occupational groups: doctor, chairman of a large national corporation, shop assistant, unskilled worker in a factory, cabinet minister in the national government; income differences are too large in the respondent´s country; responsibility of government to reduce income differences; government should provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed and spend less on benefits for poor people; demand for higher taxes for people with high incomes; opinion on...