# Data Sources Used

**Research Project:** Meaning Crisis — Causal Hypotheses (PR-00001)
**Date:** 2026-04-22

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## Substrate Datasets Consulted

All evidence came from curated Substrate datasets. No external source APIs were queried directly.

### DE-World-Values
- **Path:** `../Data/DE-World-Values/`
- **What we used:** Postmaterialism index (Wave 5: 19.4%, Wave 7: 25.8%); life satisfaction scores (Wave 5: 7.5, Wave 7: 7.1); institutional trust in political parties (~21%); church exit and union membership trends
- **Why we used it:** Only dataset containing both postmaterialism and life satisfaction in the same survey waves — enables H3's within-dataset paradox test
- **Evidence for:** H3 (4/5 observations); H1 (institutional trust signal)
- **Date accessed:** 2026-04-22

### DE-Mental-Health
- **Path:** `../Data/DE-Mental-Health/`
- **What we used:** Gallup Engagement Index (15% engaged, 70% disengaged, 15% actively disengaged); mental illness rising to rank 1–2 of all sick-day causes since 2010; BPtK waitlist time series
- **Why we used it:** Hard endpoint for meaning outcomes; engagement data operationalizes subjective meaning at scale
- **Evidence for:** H1 (disengagement ≈ meaning deficit); H3 (outcome proxy for PM paradox)
- **Date accessed:** 2026-04-22

### DE-Church-Exits
- **Path:** `../Data/DE-Church-Exits/`
- **What we used:** Church exit counts 2010–2022 (~900k exits in 2022 alone); trajectory of accelerating exits aligned with WVS Wave 6/7
- **Why we used it:** Institutional disaffiliation is a direct proxy for shared narrative collapse in H3; also serves H2 as a structural atomization marker
- **Evidence for:** H3 (observation 2: church exits + union decline parallel PM rise)
- **Date accessed:** 2026-04-22

### DE-Social-Isolation
- **Path:** `../Data/DE-Social-Isolation/`
- **What we used:** Single-person household rate (rising trend, Destatis Mikrozensus); structural atomization data
- **Why we used it:** H3 predicts that PM fragmentation produces social atomization — rising single-person households are a structural proxy
- **Evidence for:** H3 (observation 4: single-person households rising alongside postmaterialism)
- **Date accessed:** 2026-04-22

### DE-Platform-Media
- **Path:** `../Data/DE-Platform-Media/`
- **What we used:** 59% social network usage; 47% news trust; 36% active news avoidance; smartphone saturation and usage intensity data
- **Why we used it:** H2 requires evidence of accelerating information velocity; smartphone saturation and trust erosion are the key proxies
- **Evidence for:** H2 (observation: 2010 acceleration matches smartphone saturation); H3 (trust erosion as downstream effect)
- **Date accessed:** 2026-04-22

### DE-Epistemic-Competence
- **Path:** `../Data/DE-Epistemic-Competence/`
- **What we used:** 21% of adults lack functional literacy; PISA trends; media literacy assessment data
- **Why we used it:** H2 predicts integration failure — low epistemic competence amplifies the effect of information velocity
- **Evidence for:** H2 (epistemic vulnerability amplifier)
- **Date accessed:** 2026-04-22

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## Sources Not Used (but in Substrate)

The following datasets were available but not directly consulted for hypothesis evaluation:

- **DE-Democracy-Metrics** — Relevant to H1 (political efficacy) but temporal ordering data (longitudinal by election cycle) was insufficient without SOEP cross-reference
- **DE-Energy-Mix, DE-Federal-Budget, DE-Lobby-Transparency, DE-Parliament-Activity** — No direct bearing on meaning-crisis causal mechanisms
- **DE-Social-Mobility** — Relevant background context but no direct hypothesis predictions

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## Data Gaps Identified

These sources are needed to resolve H1 and H2 inconclusiveness — not currently in Substrate:

| Gap | Required For | Source to Acquire |
|---|---|---|
| SOEP waves × political efficacy questions | H1 temporal ordering | DIW Berlin — SOEP data access request |
| BPtK waitlist time series (longitudinal) | H1 meaning → agency pathway | Bundepsychotherapeutenkammer annual reports |
| ARD/ZDF Onlinestudie individual-level media diet | H2 individual-level test | ARD/ZDF Medienforschung |
| Cross-national WVS comparison (PM rank vs. crisis severity) | H3 extension | World Values Survey Association — Wave 7 codebook |