The Gernan General Social Survey (ALLBUS) is a project of GESIS that is implemented in collaboration with the Sudy Coordination Group ALLBUS as a scientific advisory body.
The ALLBUS-team in the department Data and Research on Society (DRS) is responsible for the conception, design, question program and implementation (in cooperation with the commissioned private survey institute) of the surveys.They also The ALLBUS-team in the department Survey Data Curation (SDC) is responsible for data curation, archiving and distribution. They produce cross-sectional and cumulative datasets, assemble comprehensive variable reports and other documentation materials and provide reliable access to the data.
The Study Coordination Group ALLBUS serves as a link to the scientific community, it is systematically involved in the planning of all surveys and the continuing development of the ALLBUS program. As of autumn 2023 its members are
The first four surveys in 1980, 1982, 1984 and 1986 were funded through individual grants of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)). DFG funding was also made available for the additional Baseline-Survey in 1991. With the foundation of the "Gesellschaft Sozialwissenschaftlicher Infrastruktureinrichtungen (GESIS)" in 1986, ALLBUS was included in the state-federal funding of the institutes united within GESIS and was permanently institutionalized as a joint project of then GESIS-ZUMA in Mannheim and GESIS-ZA in Cologne. Today this cooperation is continued within GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.
Up to and including 1990, the sample of the ALLBUS surveys consisted of all eligible voters in the (old) Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin living in private households. Since 1991 - when an additional survey was conducted outside the two-year cycle due to German reunification - the sample is based on the adult resident population (i.e. Germans and foreigners) in West and East Germany.
Until 1990, the sample size was 3000 respondents. In the 1991 ALLBUS baseline study, 1500 interviews were conducted in both West and East Germany. Since 1992, the target net sample size has been 2400 interviews in the old federal states and 1100 interviews in the new federal states, i.e. East Germans are over-represented in the ALLBUS sample.
The samples of the surveys in the years 1980 to 1992 as well as in 1998 were drawn following the ADM sample design (with the selection levels constituencies - households - persons). In 1994, 1996 and all surveys since 2000, on the other hand, the methodologically more demanding procedure of a sample from population registers was used (with the selection levels municipalities - residents).
The fully standardized ALLBUS interviews were conducted face-to-face until 2021. In 2000, the switch from traditional paper questionnaires (paper and pencil interviewing - PAPI) to computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) was made, which was accompanied by a method experiment. Since 2021, the ALLBUS has been completed by the respondents themselves, either on paper (PAPI) or online (computer assisted web interviewing - CAWI).
