Conferences

The data for this paper come from the Polish Panel Survey, POLPAN, conducted in 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008, containing rich information about all respondents’ jobs, changes in the family structure, personal history of political activities and other elements of individual biographies, including attitudes and opinions. POLPAN is the only panel survey in Europe in which the same men and women, constituting a national representative random sample at the beginning of the study, were interviewed over a twenty year period. Since the original panel sample is naturally aging, sub-samples of younger respondents have been added to the core of the panel sample. The sub-samples consist of persons aged 21-25 years old in 1989-1993, 1994-1998, 1999-2003, and 2004-2008. At present, GESIS has archived the first four waves. In the future, the last wave will be archived together with separate files for panelists only. In this paper the standards of constructing variables are discussed, separately for (a) the basic socio-demographic and social-stratification variables, and (b) selected variables pertaining to attitudes and opinions. In the case of socio-demographic and social-stratification variables a comparison with standards of cross-national academic and commercial research is provided. The properties of the POLPAN variables pertaining to attitudes and opinions are assessed and evaluated together with the analogous variables in the World Value Survey, the International Social Survey Programme, and the European Social Survey. The paper ends with a discussion of methodological implications of having standardized universal and country-specific indicators for various domains of social life.