conducts comparative public opinion research on economic, social and political issues across a wide
range of countries on a regular basis. The sample in each country is a national representative random
sample of the adult population designed to achieve a norm of 1,400 cases and, in any event, not less
than 1,000 cases. Questionnaires are designed to be completed in 15 minutes (not including a
standard set of socio-demographic questions); questionnaires are also designed to be suitable for self-
administration.8 The ISSP national identity survey was conducted in twenty-four countries in 1995-
96. The countries concerned were: Australia, West Germany, East Germany, Great Britain, the USA,
Austria, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Slovenia,
Poland, Bulgaria, Russia, New Zealand, Canada, the Phillippines, Japan, Estonia, Latvia and
Slovakia. The questionnaire (as implemented in the Republic ofIreland) is available on request.
Our dependent variable is the scaled response to a question that asked respondents how much
they agreed or disagreed with the statement that their country ‘should limit the import of foreign
products in order to protect its national economy’ (question 6 in the survey). While in an ideal world
one would like to have a battery of questions on trade policy preferences, we take this to be a
reasonable operationalization of protectionist sentiment.9 The data set also provides individual-level
measures of a range of demographic, socio-economic and political variables. Among the socio-
economic variables, the most valuable from the point of view of testing the implications of trade
theory is the respondent’s skill level. This is arrived at by coding the answers to questions on
respondents’ occupation using the International Labour Organisation’s ISCO88 (International
Standard Classification of Occupations) coding scheme. ISCO88 is a radical revision of the ILO’s
previous occupational coding scheme (ISCO68). The main thrust of the revision makes ISCO88
8 Full details on the ISSP consortium, including details on membership, rules and procedures and
availability of datasets and technical reports can be obtained at http://www.issp.org/info.htm
9 One might argue that the inclusion of the phrase ‘in order to protect its national economy’ is
unfortunate in that it could bias responses in a protectionist direction by assuming that limiting
imports is in some sense good for the economy. On the other hand, this is the way protectionist
measures are defended in political discourse. Furthermore, we are interested in the relationships
between this variable and our independent variables, not in estimating the absolute levels of support
for protectionism. This objective is much less vulnerable to any response bias that may exist.