Political attitudes and political participation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic
Aim
The corona pandemic has changed social, economic, political and cultural life significantly and has presented people in Germany with major individual and societal challenges. The project examines the change in political attitudes and the associated social and political participation as a result of the pandemic.
Background
The Corona pandemic has had a lasting impact on the lives of many people. It is not uncommon for significant changes in everyday life, the world of work or family life to also have a lasting impact on political attitudes. To what extent and in which social groups the pandemic has permanently changed political attitudes and related social and political participation, however, could not be reliably answered so far, because suitable data based on repeated surveys have hardly been available so far. The research project closes this gap and investigates how and in which contexts political attitudes and related social and political participation have changed in the medium and long term as a result of the pandemic. In doing so, we focus on unequally distributed burdens caused by infection control measures, in the occupational context (short-time work, job loss, closure of the company, conditions in the home office) and in the family context. In this way, we gain a better understanding of how the pandemic affects political attitudes and social participation and which social groups are particularly affected.
Approach
The project is based on a mixed-methods design and is divided into two sub-projects.
In sub-project 1 "Quantitative analyses with the NEPS" (Prof. Dr. Gundula Zoch; University of Oldenburg / LIfBi - Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories), the above-mentioned questions are analyzed with longitudinal data from several sub-studies of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) using various methods of causal - and longitudinal analysis examined.
Sub-project 2 "Conducting and evaluating focus groups" (Dr. Johannes Kiess; University of Leipzig / EFBI - Else Frenkel Brunswik Institute for Democracy Research) supplements the quantitative NEPS evaluations with focus group interviews in different regions of Germany.
Data collection and processing
Phase 1: Analysis of longitudinal data from several sub-studies of the NEPS (quantitative)
Phase 2: Collection and analysis of in-depth focus group interviews (qualitative)