Civic engagement
The indicator civic engagement measures the proportion of people in a particular age group who do voluntary work.
It is an established way of measuring social cohesion.
The data is based on the German Survey on Volunteering (Freiwilligensurvey), the most comprehensive survey carried out in Germany and the foundation for reporting on voluntary and civic engagement in Germany. A representative sample covered people aged 14 years and older in the survey. The Survey on Volunteering has been carried out every five years since 1999. The sample size has been almost doubled since the first wave. In 2014 it involved 28,690 people.
The 2014 Survey on Volunteering included telephone interviews in German and *six other languages**. This made it easier to include more people with a migration background.