Popular Conceptions of Nationhood in Old and New European

averaged. The advantage of this approach is that it enables statistical significance tests of
differences between the regions. The disadvantage of some countries being overrepresented and
others underrepresented because of differing sample sizes, which was a major concern of Shulman,
does not apply for the Eurobarometer data because all countries have approximately equal sample
sizes.

⁹ To assess the statistical significance of differences in the regions’ mean scores an independent
samples t-test was performed on the data.

¹⁰ This particular result actually matches the ISSP data set because Hungary and the Czech Republic
headed the ranking list of countries on importance assigned to language in that data set as well
(remember that language is one of the items constituting the cultural dimension). Moreover, in the
same data set respondents in both countries expressed weak support for the item „respect political
institutions and law’ (Shulman 2002). This is also consistent with their score on the political items
in the Eurobarometer survey.

¹¹ The question covering national sentiment was phrased as follows: “How much do you agree or
disagree with the following statements?” („agree strongly’ - „disagree strongly’ on 5-point scale)
-   I would rather be a citizen of [country] than of any other country in the world.

-   The world would be a better place if people from other countries were more like those of

[country]

-   Generally speaking, [country] is a better country than most other countries

-   People should support their country even if their country is in the wrong

- When my country does well in international sports, it makes me proud to be [nationality]

¹² We calculated the voluntarist dimension, the ascriptive dimension and the index of xenophobia in
the same way as the dimensions of nationhood in the Eurobarometer data set, i.e. we added up the
respondent scores on the items clustering in a dimension and divided the resulting figure by the
number of items pooled in that dimension.

¹³ Western Europe includes West Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Italy, Ireland, The Netherlands,
Norway, Sweden and Spain. Eastern Europe is represented by East Germany, Hungary, Czech
Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia, Latvia and Slovak Republic.

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