Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The New Europe Barometer (NEB) series, originally known as the New Democracies Barometer (NDB), has been conducted annually across Central and Eastern Europe since autumn 1991. The same questions are asked in each country and repeated from year to year, so trends can be analysed across a wide variety of post-Communist societies. Approximately 1,000 respondents in each country are interviewed face-to-face each year about their economic, political and social attitudes and behaviour. Data are available for separate years and also as a trend dataset (SN 5241). Further information on the NEB is available on the CSPP Barometer Surveys web site, along with details of other survey series.

The Centre for the Study of Public Policy and the Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin, organised surveys in East and West Germany focusing on economic behaviour and political attitudes in the light of reunification. Two waves were conducted in 1993 and 1994. The surveys were designed to test the relative importance of German history, Sovietisation in East Germany, the impact of a ready-made state in West Germany, social structure and individual calculations of the costs and benefits of reunification. These hypotheses make contrasting predictions about whether East and West Germans should be much the same or different in outlooks and also whether East Germans should be more like West Germans or like East Europeans who also lived four decades under Communist institutions.

Main Topics:

The questionnaire covered the following topics:

• economic activity
• income
• economic evaluations
• political evaluations
• attitudes to the unification of Germany
• ethnicity, migration
• voting
• party preference
• social topics
• life satisfaction
• social structure