Harry Ganzeboom’s Tools for ISSP users

Help & Recommendations

on ISSP Background Variables [BV]

The International Social Survey Programme [ISSP] is a long running international project to collect comparative social attitudes data, using a short questionnaire (60 items) on an annually renewed topic. The project has started in 1985 with 5 countries and now covers more than 40 countries around the world. Please consult www.issp.org for the most uptodate information of this important cross-national dataset.

Next to its 60 topical items, ISSP currently collects data on about 40 stable background variables to allow for in-depth analysis of social conditions that give rise to variations in the world-wide public opinion climate. While the BV are supposed to be (and to a large extend are) stable, ISSP users are often faced with complicated and seemingly intimidating tasks to harmonize the BV into a ready-for-analysis format. In these Help & Recommendation I provide just that. Most of these are presentations and short papers that I have written over the years.

·       List of BVs in ISSP [most recent version]

·       Weights

·       Demographics

·       Education

·       Occupation

·       Income

Further links:

·       ISSP-NL ISSP data collected in the Netherland 2003-2015

·       ISSP-SE ISSP data collected in Suriname 2012-2026

Last revised: April 28 2026.