A new dataset is now available in the Qualiservice catalogue at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.975394.

The dataset consists of six transcripts of focus group interviews collected by Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser at the end of 2021 in Berlin and mid-2022 in Essen as part of the Leibniz project “Neue Ungleichheiten, neue Spaltungen? Eine politische Soziologie der Gegenwartsgesellschaft” (“New inequalities, new divisions? A political sociology of contemporary society“).

The project deals with conflicts of inequality and aims at measuring the correlation between inequalities and attitude patterns in order to shed light on the dynamics of social conflicts. Thus, the aim is to scrutinise existing diagnoses of a split in Western societies. The qualitative data collected as part of the project capture arguments used to justify one’s own cultural positionings and criticise the ones of others. In order to answer these questions, six focus group interviews with a total of 42 participants were conducted. In each city, two focus groups consisted of members of the lower middle class / lower class and the upper middle class. A third focus group that was also carried out in both cities consisted of people holding conflicting value orientations. The discussions pivoted around the perception of urgent problems in Germany and social conflicts in four “arenas of inequality”.

The anonymised transcripts of the six focus group interviews are now available for secondary use in research and academic teaching. The dataset offers re-use potential especially for the analysis of political discourses and everyday-perceptions of social inequality, migration policy, social diversity and climate protection. Further potential for secondary use is offered by analysing the associated quantitative survey data (n=2530) archived at GESIS.