ISSP 2017: Social Networks and Social Resources III, Lithuania, July 2018

The purpose of the study: to explore the opinions of Lithuanian citizens on social networks, their social activities and their interactions with specific people.
Major investigated questions: a list of jobs that might be held by people respondents know (family members or relatives, close friends or someone else) was proposed with job titles (bus or lorry driver, a senior executive of a large company (etc.; 10 jobs in total)), and the questionnaire asked whether respondents knew a number of people, who works in one of the mentioned jobs. Respondents were asked whether they agree or disagree on the following statements, such as “Differences in income in Lithuania are too large”; “For a society to be fair, differences in people’s standard of living should be small” (etc.; 4 statements in total). The questionnaire asked who should primarily provide health care to the sick and who should care for the elderly. Respondents were asked in the past 12 months, how often they have taken part in activities of groups or associations of leisure, sports and culture, activities of political parties, political groups or political associations, as well as activities of charitable or religious organisations that do voluntary work. The evaluation of the statement “People like me don’t have any say about what the government does” was taken into consideration. After providing the list of situations, the respondents were asked who they would first turn to for help during the listed situations (10 situations in total). Furthermore, the respondents were asked to say how they felt during the last 4 weeks, had they felt that they lacked companionship, were they isolated from others and were left out. Lithuanian respondents were asked to answer whether people would try to take advantage of them if they had the opportunity, if they would try to be honest with them, if people can be trusted in general, or whether they need to be very careful with people. The survey investigated the trust in Lithuanian courts and major private companies. Respondents were asked whether they would agree with the statements such as “Adult children have a duty to look after their elderly parents”; “You should take care of yourself and your family first, before helping other people” and “People who are better off should help friends who are less well off”. The questionnaire asked how often respondents feel pressure and receive too many demands from their family, relatives or friends, and have any of the mentioned people acted angry or upset with the respondent during the past 4 weeks. Respondents were asked how often they go out to eat or drink with three more friends or acquaintances who are not family members, and how often do they make new friends or acquaintances during these occasions. The questionnaire asked to indicate how many people do respondents have contact with on a typical weekday irrespective of whether they know them or not. including anyone they chat with, talk to, or text, either face-to-face, by phone, internet or any other communication device, and how many of these people do they see face-to-face on a typical weekday. When respondents were asked to think of a parent, a sibling, an adult child, a close friend, a family member other than a spouse or partner, parents, siblings and adult children they see most often, they were asked to indicate how often they see them face-to-face, by phone, internet or other means of communication. Respondents were also asked to think about how much communication with all family members and close friends is through text messages, mobile phones, or other communication devices that use the Internet. The survey asked Lithuanians to rate their physical and mental health and asked if they had felt unhappy and depressed in the last 4 weeks, and whether they felt they had difficulties that were piling up so high that they could not overcome them. In addition, the respondents were asked whether they would agree or disagree with the statement “It is easy for me to accomplish my goals”. Respondents were also asked how satisfied are with their life, as well as when thinking about the total income, and they were asked how difficult or easy it is for them to make ends meet. Questionnaire also asked many languages do they speak well enough to hold a conversation in, including the language(s) they speak at home. The respondents were asked whether they would agree or disagree with the statements such as “It is all right to develop friendships with people just because they can be of use to you” and “When another person does a favour for you, you should feel obligated to pay that person back”. The next question was to find out whether, when going out to eat or a drink with three or more friends or acquaintances who are not members of the respondents' family, they often find themselves in situations where one person is dominating the conversation at these occasions, and the consideration is given to who sits near whom. At the end of the survey, when respondents were asked to think of a person from the respondents' hometown or region who is not a member of their family and with whom they have the most frequent contact, the respondents were asked if they often communicate with that person face-to-face, by phone, via the Internet or by any other communication device. A similar question was asked about the forms of communication with a person from the respondents' religious community.
Socio-demographic characteristics: gender, age, level of education, membership in organizations, religion, marital status, nationality, political views, political participation, size of household, respondent's average personal income, place of residence, working situation of the respondent and of his/her spouse or partner.

This dataset was created using version 2.0.0 of the integrated data file of countries participating in the ISSP module “Social Networks and Social Resources III“ (Lithuanian data) published in the GESIS Data Archive on 2019-08-19.