Social inequality.Themes: Importance of social background, merit, discrimination,corruption and good relations as prerequisites for success in society(wealthy family, well-educated parents, good education, ambitions, hardworking, knowing the right people, political connections, givingbribes, person´s race and religion, gender); attitude towards equalityof educational opportunity in one´s country (corruption as criteria forsocial mobility, only students from the best secondary schools have agood chance to obtain a university education, only rich people canafford the costs of attending university, same chances for everyone toenter university, regardless of gender, ethnicity or socialbackground); opinion about own salary: actual occupational earning isadequate; estimation of actual and reasonable earnings for occupationalgroups: doctor, chairman of a large national corporation, shopassistant, unskilled worker in a factory, cabinet minister in thenational government; income differences are too large in therespondent´s country; responsibility of government to reduce incomedifferences; government should provide a decent standard of living forthe unemployed and spend less on benefits for poor people; demand forhigher taxes for people with high incomes; opinion on taxes for peoplewith high income; justification of better medical supply and bettereducation for people with higher income; perception of class conflictsbetween social groups in the country (poor and rich people, workingclass and middle class, management and workers, people at the top ofsociety and people at the bottom); self-assessment and assessment ofthe family the respondent grew up in on a top-bottom-scale; socialposition compared to father (social mobility); salary criteria (scale:responsibility, education, needed support for family and children,quality of job performance or hard work at the job); feeling of a justpayment; characterisation of the actual and the desired social systemof the country, measured by classification on pyramid diagrams (imageof society).Demography: sex; age; marital status; steady life partner; years ofschooling; highest education level; country specific education anddegree; current employment status (respondent and partner); hoursworked weekly; occupation (ISCO 1988) (respondent and partner);supervising function at work; working for private or public sector orself-employed (respondent and partner); if self-employed: number ofemployees; trade union membership; earnings of respondent (countryspecific); family income (country specific); size of household;household composition; party affiliation (left-right); country specificparty affiliation; participation in last election; religiousdenomination; religious main groups; attendance of religious services;self-placement on a top-bottom scale; region (country specific); sizeof community (country specific); type of community: urban-rural area;country of origin or ethnic group affiliation; occupation status andprofession of respondent´s father and mother during the youth of therespondent (ISCO 88); number of books in the parental home during theyouth of the respondent (cultural resources); occupational status andprofession in the first job and the current job (ISCO 88 and workingtype); self-assessment of the social class; estimated amount of familywealth (monetary value of assets); work orientation:self-characterisation at this time and in the youth of the respondentconcerning his performance at work respectively at school. Additionally coded: administrative mode of data-collection; weightingfactor; case substitution.

Sampling procedures differ for the individual countries: partly simple, partly multi-stage stratified random samples