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.The release of the cumulated ISSP ´Social Inequality´ modules for the years 1987, 1992, 1999 and 2009 consists of two separate datasets: ZA5890 and ZA5891. This documentation deals with the main dataset ZA5890. It contains all the cumulated variables, while the supplementary data file ZA5961 contains those variables that could not be cumulated for various reasons. However, they can be matched easily to the cumulated file if necessary. A comprehensive overview on the contents, the structure and basic coding rules of both data files can be found in the following guide: Guide for the ISSP ´Social Inequality´ cumulation of the years 1987,1992, 1999 and 2009 Social Inequality I-IV: Importance of social background and other factors as prerequisites for personal success in society (wealthy family, well-educated parents, good education, ambitions, natural ability, hard work, knowing the right people, political connections, person´s race and religion, the part of a country a person comes from, gender and political beliefs); chances to increase personal standard of living (social mobility); corruption as criteria for social mobility; importance of differentiated payment; higher payment with acceptance of increased responsibility; higher payment as...