German District Administrations Survey on COVID-19 Pandemic Management

A survey of 187 individuals from local administrations across Germany's 401 districts and independent cities, conducted in March 2021. Participants included heads of crisis management teams, public health officials, and mayors.

Use Cases

• Analyze survey responses from heads or members of crisis management teams to understand local administrative decision-making.
• Compare perspectives on pandemic management between representatives of local public health offices and mayors or district administrators.
• Study the voluntary participation patterns across the 401 targeted districts and independent cities.

Strengths

• Survey targeted all 401 German districts and independent cities, providing a complete national frame.
• 187 individual participants, with 59% being heads or members of crisis management teams.
• Survey validity was pre-tested between 02 March and 06 March 2021.

Limitations

• Low response rate of approximately 47% (187 respondents from 401 targeted entities).
• 5% of participants did not provide information about their position, creating a small unknown category.
• Specific survey questions, columns, and raw data are not described in the input.

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse, authored by Alexa Lenz.

Collection Method

Voluntary online survey conducted via the Unipark platform, with invitations sent by post and email.

Time Range

Survey conducted and pre-tested in March 2021.

Freshness

Data collection occurred in March 2021; metadata was last updated in January 2026.

Geography

Germany, covering all districts (Landkreise) and independent cities (kreisfreie Städte).