Quantity first, content second
The second part of the questionnaire opens with a plain number: how many hours of free time do you have on an ordinary day? Only then comes what you do with them.
That order is deliberate. Cultural participation is usually discussed as though it were a question of interest. Very often it is first a question of time — and not time in the diary, but time a person can actually dispose of. Whoever puts a child to bed in the evening, or works shifts, has different free hours in the evening from someone with neither.
Why this matters for the analysis
Because it prevents the most common misreading. If a group goes to concerts less often, that is quickly read as a lack of interest. If it also says that the same group has on average two hours less freely available time and more often carries fixed obligations, the finding looks different — and so does the conclusion.
Voluntary work is asked about for a related reason. It is free time that has been given away, and it is at the same time a form of participation that regularly falls through the cracks of cultural statistics. Whoever rehearses with the choir, runs the association or organises the neighbourhood festival is more active in cultural life than many a subscriber — only no visitor count records them.
What does not follow from it
There is no right answer. “Television” is as valid an answer to the question about your favourite leisure activity as “opera”, and it is taken just as seriously in the analysis. The questionnaire contains no appeals, no event listings and no offers.
Not going is not a gap. Anyone who does not use leisure and cultural offerings has, in this study, no deficit to be remedied, but reasons — and understanding those is the actual purpose of the survey.
No programme is derived from the results. They describe what people do and what they are missing. They are not a prescription for what is staged; the freedom of the arts under Article 5(3) of the German Basic Law is untouched.
Further reading
The other two parts are set out under Living in Düsseldorf and Culture. How long the questionnaire takes and how it is filled in is explained under Tips.