Public Opinion Barometers of the Soros Foundation (1994-2007)

Between 1994 and 2007, Soros Foundation for Open Society Romania (SFOS) initiated and founded a series of surveys that allow keeping track of changes in Romanian society. Their generic name was Public Opinion Barometer (BOP).

RQSA and Center for Public Innovation (CiP) cooperated to retrieve the surveys, reconstitute their metadata, and bring them to the public, as open data. The work was done voluntarily by Bogdan Voicu and Ovidiu Voicu. Dumitru Sandu and Mircea comșa helped with various files and information that was missing in the personal archives of Bogdan Voicu and Ovidiu Voicu.

All datasets are freely available as dataverse: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/bop_romania

BOPs were carried out initially four time a year, then 3 times, and in the mid-2000s only twice a year. In total, there are 35 waves. A core module was completed in every wave by additional ones, allowing to analyze the dynamics of several aspects, such as voting behaviour, trust in institutions, life satisfaction, attitudes towards democracy, etc. Various waves were devoted to specific aspects of social life, including religiosity, gender relations, emigration, civic society, corruption, informal economy, etc.

The BOPs were run by a program officer from Soros Foundation and a board of Romanian social scientists. The board changed its composition over time. In total, 36 individuals were involved in developing the questionnaires of the 29 surveys. data collection was carried out by various data collecting agencies, including CURS SA, IMAS, MMT, IRSOP, LUAS, ICCV, Gallup.

The dataverse includes:

• All databases, with Romanian labels;

• Questionnaires for almost all surveys;

• Press releases for most waves, including descriptive statistics for most variables. Most press releases are in English or have an English version;

• For the last waves of the survey, we have made available extended analyses, published as 40-70 page working papers immediately after data collection;

• A list of personnel involved in designing the researches.

Most information is available in Romanian, but some is also available in English.

The plan for future developments is to provide translations of labels in the databases, and to bring (back) to the public space all other special surveys initiated by the SFOS in its existence.

Images that accompany this post are simple illustrations of materials produced over time by BOP teams. Full versions are available in the mentioned dataverse.

Databases and research reports produced under the BOP label were a main reference in Romanian public debate in the 1990s and 2000s, and served as main data source for several generations of sociologists and political scientists. By bringing them back to the public space, both RQSA and CiP show their appreciation for what BOP meant. We are confident that this data will continue to help understanding various phenomena, including the ones related to postcommunist transition.