Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The New Europe Barometer (NEB) series, originally known as the New Democracies Barometer (NDB), has been conducted annually across Central and Eastern Europe since autumn 1991. The same questions are asked in each country and repeated from year to year, so trends can be analysed across a wide variety of post-Communist societies. Approximately 1,000 respondents in each country are interviewed face-to-face each year about their economic, political and social attitudes and behaviour. Data are available for separate years and also as a trend dataset (SN 5241). Further information on the NEB is available on the CSPP Barometer Surveys web site, along with details of other survey series.
Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, post-communist regimes have followed radically different paths: ten are now new member states of the European Union, while others remain partners in the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States. This project draws on a unique database of more than 100 New Europe Barometer (NEB) surveys undertaken in post-communist countries since 1991. Funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) supported a fresh multinational survey in autumn/winter 2004-5 in Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The seventh NEB survey (2004-2005) focuses on topics such as whether respondents evaluate their new regime and compare it to the past, and how committed are they to the rejection of undemocratic alternatives; what accounts for differences in evaluations of post-communist regimes; and how important the costs of economic transformation and/or the opportunities of movement to the market have been. The NEB surveys are comparative; the same questions are asked in all countries covered. For 2004, the results were merged into a single multinational data file, with each country's responses weighted equally at 1,000. The multinational data file encourages research that considers the extent to which causes of division within society, for example education, age or economic status, operate transnationally. It is possible to assess to what extent and under what circumstances national context is an important influence on behaviour and attitudes (net of individual attributes), and to test the importance of absolute standards of living, which are measured cross-nationally by a household's material possessions, as against relative income advantage or disadvantage. In addition to this, separate data files for all 13 countries are included in the dataset. The majority of questions asked in the 2004-2005 survey had been asked in previous surveys. The responses from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are comparable with the New Baltic Barometer survey series (available from the UK Data Archive under GN 33416).
Main Topics:
The NEB questionnaire is designed to create political, social and economic indicators for varied social science concepts, some familiar in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Topics covered include family circumstances and social support, employment, economic conditions and hardship, income, attitudes to taxation, unemployment and public expenditure, attitudes to political and social issues, attitudes to communism, socialism and other political systems, trust in authorities and government, perceived threats from neighbouring and other countries, political party allegiance, and personal and household demographic characteristics. Standard Measures: Many 'transformation' measures were devised especially to take into account the consequences of the communist legacy and transformation, e.g. regime changes. They are complemented by indicators appropriate for stable democracies with market economies.
Quota sample
Multi-stage stratified random sample
The application of sampling principles varies with the national context, and in Lithuania and Estonia, special procedures were required to sample Russian ethnics. For further details, see documentation.
Face-to-face interview
