sseecodebooks

Codebook prepared by Donald J. Treiman

Organization of the codebook

The codebook is divided into four parts, plus a number of appendices, and the pages are numbered within parts. The remainder of Part I provides documentation pertaining to the questionnaire as a whole: reports on the sample and fieldwork from each of the country teams, instructions to interviews and specifications regarding country-specific variables, a list of all variables in the file, an aphabetical index of variable names, etc. It is particularly important to note the instructions to interviewers (Section E) and specifications for country-specific response categories and variables (Section F) in order to determine the exact meaning of certain variables, e.g., the last activity in the activity history. Part II provides the codes for all variables coded directly from the questionnaire, with the exception of country-specific questions, which are shown in Part IV. In Part III constructed variables, such as standardized education, occupation, income, party membership, and ethnicity codes, are shown. Appendices A- C give codes for response categories used repeatedly throughout the questionnaire. Appendix A gives the "Show Cards" used as response categories. Appendix B gives the codes for level of education completed and type of school, which are country-specific. Appendix C gives the codes for variables used to describe jobs. Appendix D gives the SPSS commands used to create the constructed variables shown in Part III. Appendices E and F give lengthy country-specific codes: Appendix E gives the codes for tertiary educational institutions and Appendix F gives the codes for geographical places. Appendix G shows the questionnaires actually administered in each country.

Country-specific responses. Inevitably, the response categories for some variables departed from the international standard, even though the question was asked in the standard way. These are included as response categories to the standard variable, but have an extra initial digit designating the country: 1 = Bulgaria 2 = Czech Republic 3 = Hungary 4 = Poland 5 = Russia 6 = Slovakia Thus, for example, the Russian questionnaire added a response category, "Cooperative," to Q. G8c, "Who did you work for" (in a side job). This category is included as the fifth response to QG8c, but with the code 505, the initial digit designating the code as pertaining only to the Russian questionnaire.

Country-specific variables. In some instances, country teams added variables. All of these are shown in Part IV of the codebook. Although we had requested that all country-specific variables be included at the end of the questionnaire, this request was not always followed. In particular, the added variables often were extensions of sets of variables already in the questionnaire. In these cases, we have added flags to Part II of the codebooks specifiying that additional questions were asked and referring the user to Part IV. Added variables that represent new topics are flagged at the end of the questionnaire.

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