International Social Survey Programme: Role of Government V - ISSP 2016

The role of Government Topics: Obey the law without exception vs. follow conscience on occasions; public protest meetings and protest marches and demonstrations against the government should be allowed; allowance for revolutionaries to hold public meetings and to publish books expressing their views; worse type of justice error (to convict an innocent person or to let a guilty person go free); consent or rejection of various economic measures by the government (cuts in government spending, government financing of projects to create new jobs, less government regulation of business, support for industry to develop new products and technology, support for declining industries to protect jobs, reducing the working week to create more jobs); preference for more or less government spending in various areas (the environment, health, the police and law enforcement, education, the military and defence, old age pensions, unemployment benefits, culture and the arts); question of government´s responsibility (provide a job for everyone, keep prices under control, provide health care for the sick, provide a decent standard of living for the old, provide industry with the help it needs to grow, provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed, reduce income differences between the rich and the poor, give financial help to university students from low-income families, provide decent housing for those who can’t afford it, impose strict laws to make industry do less damage to the environment, promote equality between men and women); responsibility for the provision of health care for the sick, care for older people, and school education (Government, private companies/for-profit organisations, non-profit organisations/charities/cooperatives, religious organisations, family relatives or friends); most and second most influence factor on government actions (e.g. the media, trade unions, business, banks and industry, etc.); policies in the country depend more on what is happening in the world economy, rather than who is in government vice versa; opinion on civil liberties and public security: government should have the right to keep people under video surveillance in public areas, and to monitor e-mails and any other information exchanged on the Internet; all government information should be publicly available vs. limited (scale 0-10); government should have the right to collect information about anyone living in the country, and about anyone living abroad without their knowledge; government should have the right to detain people without putting them on trial, to tap people’s telephone conversations, and to stop and search people in the street at random; interest in politics; people like me don’t have any say about what the government does; pretty good understanding of the important political issues; Members of Parliament try to keep promises; most civil servants can be trusted; evaluation of the amount of taxes for high incomes, middle incomes, and low incomes; tax authorities make sure people pay their taxes, and treat everyone in accordance with the law; major private companies comply with laws, and try to avoid paying their taxes; corruption: estimated incidence of corruption among politicians, and among public officials; personal experience with corruption in the last five years: frequency of how often a public official wanted a bribe; evaluation of success of the government in providing health care, in providing a decent standard of living for the old, and in dealing with security threats. Demography: sex; age; year of birth; years in school; education (country specific); highest completed education level; work status; hours worked weekly; employment relationship; number of employees; supervision of employees; number of supervised employees; type of organisation: for-profit vs. non profit and public vs. private; occupation (ISCO/ILO-08); main employment status; living in steady partnership; trade union membership; religious affiliation or denomination (country specific); groups of religious denominations; attendance of religious services; top-bottom self-placement; vote participation in last general election; country specific party voted in last general election; party voted (left-right); self-assessed affiliation to ethnic group 1 and 2 (country specific); number of children in the household; number of toddlers in the household; size of household; earnings of respondent (country specific); household income (country specific); father´s and mother´s country of birth; marital status; place of living: urban – rural; region (country specific). Information about spouse/ partner on: work status; hours worked weekly; employment relationship; supervision of employees; occupation (ISCO/ILO-08); main employment status. Additionally encoded: respondent-ID number; date of interview (year, month, day); case substitution flag; mode of data collection; weight; Country ISO 3166 Code, Country/Sample ISO 3166 Code, Country Prefix ISO 3166 Code.