1 Introduction

This analysis looks at a single item from the European Social Survey (ESS11).
The selected statement is:

“She/he looks for every opportunity to have fun. It is important to her/him to do things that give her/him joy.”

This statement is represented in the questionnaire by the variable impfuna.
Respondents expressed their agreement on a 6-point Likert scale with possible answers ranging from “very much like me” to “not at all like me”. Only the results from Austria are taken into account in this analysis. A total of 2354 answers are available, of which 2327 are taken into account, as answers such as “no answer” and “don’t know” are not included.

2 Descriptive visualization

Table 1 shows the simple frequency distribution of the answers. This shows which answer categories were selected most frequently. This overview serves as an initial assessment of the general tendency within the sample.

3 Likert chart: Analysis of the scale distribution

The distribution of the response categories is then visualized using a Likert chart (Table 2). This form of presentation offers the advantage that agreement, neutrality and rejection can be differentiated by color. This makes it possible to see at a glance how strongly the respondents agree with the statement.



4 Summary

Finally, the distribution of responses is summarized in Table 3. In addition to the percentages for “Low” (rejection), “Neutral” and “High” (agreement), the mean value and the standard deviation are also shown. These descriptive parameters provide a further indication of the tendency and dispersion of the answers in the sample.

Table 3: Summary and Descriptive Statistics
Item Low Neutral High Mittelwert SD
Spaß_ist_wichtig 74.55952 0 25.44048 2.877525 1.220366

5 Conclusion

The results show that the majority of respondents agree with the statement that it is important to them to have fun and do things that give them pleasure. This result indicates a Fun and Joy Orientation in the population surveyed. The use of the Likert format has proven to be a helpful tool for recording subjective attitudes.