Research question/goal:

The main objective of this research project is to explore contextual effects on diverse manifestations of social distance on the part of Germans towards ethnic minorities. Particular attention will be paid to the social embeddedness of such attitudes, behavioral intentions and actual behavior in social networks and primary groups. The analysis of these kinds of contextual effects is based upon a special survey which builds on snowball sampling procedures and follow-up-interviews in a social networks research design. A first study in Mannheim (N=500) was used to test the whole research design and to find out whether the main hypotheses of the project are plausible. In the current second study, conducted in Leipzig, Dortmund, Cottbus und Heilbronn (N=2000), the same approach is used to account for differences in manifestations of social distance towards ethnic minorities in Western and Eastern Germany.