This project is funded with grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation (SES 9111722 and SBR 9310395), the U.S. National Council for Soviet and Eastern European Research (806-29), and the Dutch National Science Foundation [NWO]. In addition, various grants supported the research in individual countries: in the Czech Republic, grants from the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (82801), and from the National Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (403/93/0622); and in Hungary, funds from the Institute of Sociology and the Institute of Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences).

Principal Investigators:

Ivan Szelenyi, UCLA Donald J. Treiman, UCLA

Codebook prepared by Donald J. Treiman

International Data Set Prepared by Eastern European Group, Dept. of Sociology, UCLA.

A. Introduction

As part of the project "Social Stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989," sample surveys were conducted in 1993 and 1994 in six countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia. Using a questionnaire common to all countries, national probability samples of approximately 5,000 members of the adult population were surveyed in five of the six countries in 1993; in Poland, due to the lack of local funds, the data collection was delayed until 1994 and the sample size was reduced to approximately 3,500. To permit analyses of special interest to urban geographers (the Dutch funding was provided by a study committee of the Dutch NSF consisting of sociologists and urban geographers), over-samples of the populations of Prague and Warsaw were surveyed, with the sample sizes sufficient to bring the sum of cases from the over-sample and the national sample in each country to approximately 1,500. (About 900 cases each are available for Budapest and Sofia, generated by the national sample design. Thus, a four city comparison of Eastern European capitals is feasible.) The design of the survey called for exactly comparable wording of questions, and variation in the response categories only where national variations in circumstances (e.g., different religious distributions) warranted it. Country teams were free to add local questions at the end of the questionnaire. To ensure such comparability, the questionnaire was translated into each local language and then back-translated into English; the back-translated versions were compared as a group by a multi-lingual team and discrepancies in wording corrected. Inevitably, despite our best intentions, minor variations crept into the questionnaire. These are identified at appropriate places in the Codebook. The local language questionnaires are shown in Appendix G (Vol. II). (Probability samples of about 1,000 members of the old elite and about 1,000 members of the new elite in each country except Slovakia were also surveyed, using a similar but not identical questionnaire. These surveys have a separate codebook, which may be found under the title "Social Stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989: Elite Survey".)

The project began as a comparative study of three countries: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. As the project developed, investigators from Russia and then Bulgaria expressed interest in joining the project. Fortunately, additional funding was secured to make this possible. Then in 1992 Czechoslovakia split into two separate countries. The Czechoslovak team, which was based in Prague, managed, with some additional funding, to conduct full general population surveys in both parts of the country. The Slovak study was carried out with the cooperation of Jan Buncak, of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, who joined the project as Principal Investigator for Slovakia.

This was a cooperative project, in which collaborators from each of the countries came together approximately twice a year, first to design the research and develop the questionnaire, then to coordinate field work procedures and post-field work data processing, and then to analyze the data. The principal members of the country teams include the following, with the country coordinators indicated by *:

Bulgaria
*Dimitrina Petrova, Institute for Social and Environmental Studies Tsvetan Markov, Sofia University

The Czech Republic
Pavel Machonin, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
*Petr Mateju, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences Milan Tucek, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences

Hungary [country coordinator, Ivan Szelenyi]
Rudolf Andorka, Budapest School of Economics and Hungarian National Science Foundation
Tamas Kolosi, TARKI
Imre Kovach, Institute of Political Science, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Janos Ladanyi, Institute of Sociology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Peter Robert, TARKI
Janos Timar, Median

Poland
Henryk Domanski, Institute of Sociology and Philosophy, Polish Academy of Sciences
Kazimierz Slomczynski, Ohio State University and Institute of Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski, Institute of Political Science, Polish Academy of Sciences,
*Jacek Wasilewski, Jagellonian University and Institute of Political Science, Polish Academy of Sciences

Russia
*Ludmila Khakhulina, Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VCIOM)
Natasha Yershova, Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VCIOM)

Slovakia
*Jan Buncak, Institute of Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences

Netherlands
*Harry B. G. Ganzeboom, Utrecht University
Jan van Weesip, Utrecht University

U.S.
Jozsef Borocz
Ivan Szelenyi
Szonja Szelenyi
Akos Rona-Tas
*Donald J. Treiman

UCLA graduate student research assistants
Gil Eyal
Eva Fodor
Eric Hanley
Larry King
Eric Kostello
Matthew McKeever
Christopher Paul
Sergei Sibirtsev

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