The first part of the questionnaire is not about culture
It is about the city. How long you have lived here, how you live, what you consider Düsseldorf’s biggest problems at the moment, and whether you think things are getting better or worse.
This is not a warm-up. Who uses which offerings depends first of all on where and how a person lives — on distance, on the journey, on the time of day, on what one’s own part of the city offers in the way of routes and opportunities. A survey that asks only about theatre visits ends up measuring, above all, who lives close enough.
Why this matters for the analysis
Because only this information makes the answers to the culture questions readable. That somebody rarely goes to a museum means nothing on its own — it means something once you know whether it is the money, the time of day, the journey, the childcare, or simply that the person is not interested. Those are five very different findings with five very different conclusions, and without the first part of the questionnaire they cannot be told apart.
The second reason is the sample. The letters go to randomly drawn addresses, not to volunteers. Even so, who replies and who does not is never quite evenly distributed. Only the information on housing and living circumstances shows which groups are missing from the responses — and therefore how robust the results are. A panel that does not collect this cannot put a figure on its own accuracy.
What does not follow from it
The question about the city’s problems is not a vote. It is asked openly and analysed openly — as a description of what occupies people, not as a list of demands and not as an instruction to anybody.
The panel is neutral in world view and party politics. It represents no position and serves none. Where political characteristics are collected, they are ordinary survey variables, and answering is voluntary.
Your address stays out of it. Address data and answers are held in separate systems. Analysis is anonymised and aggregated only; individual households are not identifiable in the results.
Further reading
The other two parts are set out under Your free time and Culture. How the survey is designed is explained under The study; what exactly is collected and how long it is kept, under Data.