Study title

Since 1989, School Elections have been conducted in tandem with parliamentary and municipal elections. The present data file is from the survey conducted in upper secondary schools parallel to the School Election of 1997. In the participating schools, students first vote in the School Election, and subsequently respond to the survey. In addition to the information concerning voter turnout and centile support for various parties, variables describing the municipality the school is placed in were added. In practice, this entailed adding variables concerning the environment of the school, specifically, information concerning the municipality, such as population density and share of the population that has emigrated from countries outside the Nordic region. The purpose was to facilitate inquiries of the impact of environmental factors in determining the political preferences of the students. The school elections started as a loosely formulated idea during the parliamentary election of 1989. IBM expressed the desire to build a framework around the school elections, equivalent to that which they had already developed around parliamentary and municipal elections. NSD – Norwegian Centre for Research Data (now Sikt - Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research) wanted to use the schools' ebd-equipment and the statistics program NSDstat to conduct a national election survey of students of upper secondary schools. The two ideas were collectively organized and the project was promised substantial media coverage through NRK's election coverage and text-TV. The project "School Election '89" was a success, and was followed by equivalent projects for subsequent elections. The mock election of 1997 was to all intents and purposes conducted in the same manner as its predecessors. NSD – Norwegian Centre for Research Data and IBM have been the organizers of the school election and the national survey. The project has received valuable support from the Ministry...