Introduction: public opinion research

Studies conducted using surveys possess, among others, the virtue of gathering information about a wide variety of issues for a great diversity of objectives (Rojas Tejada, Fernández Prados, & Pérez Meléndez, Reference Rojas Tejada, Fernández Prados, Pérez Meléndez and Síntesis1998); however, they have come to be identified with those that focus on public opinion (Reference Donsbach and MazzoleniDonsbach, 2016; Reference WaldenWalden, 2013). Donsbach (Reference Donsbach and Mazzoleni2016) states that most academics would agree that a public opinion survey is defined by three terms: opinion, which indicates options and attitudes as well as the behaviours derived from them and is the nucleus of said surveys; the public, which means that the survey questions are mostly related to topics of general interest; and finally, survey, which indicates the technique that is applied in a standardised manner to large or representative samples.

In the same way, we find close links between democracies and public opinion. Thus, one of the keys to successful democratic governance is precisely the connection between representative policy opinion and public opinion that is responsible and active (Reference Soroka and WlezienSoroka & Wlezien, 2010). Ever since political science has considered public opinion to be vital for addressing the problems of representative and democratic government (Reference LippmannLippmann, 1922), the leading challenges have been for citizens to link to and legitimize the status quo and connect with, participate in or deliberate about political decision-making.

Public opinion polls help fill that gap, whether by narrowing the democratic divide between representatives and the represented or simply by making citizens’ opinions known. For these reasons, the media shows an interest in surveys as a way of incorporating citizens’ opinions into public debate, and organised civil society considers surveys to be essential instruments for supporting their opinions and influencing the political agenda. Finally, political elites and political parties, governments and public policies must constantly show and demonstrate their connection with voters and the ‘will of the people’ through surveys (Reference Carballo, Hjelmar, Carballo and HjelmarCarballo & Hjelmar, 2008).

International surveys and public opinion

The process of globalisation, democratisation in the West and the successful expansion of the technique of research using surveys after the Second World War led to the appearance of the first international surveys (Reference Karp, Vowles, Atkeson and AlvarezKarp & Vowles, 2016; Reference Smith, Fu, Wolf, Joye, Smith and FuSmith & Fu, 2016). The precursors of surveys aimed at multiple populations initiated a new typology of social research characterised in most cases as being multilingual, multicultural, multinational and multiregional (Harkness et al., Reference Harkness, Braun, Edwards, Johnson, Lyberg, Mohler and Smith2010). However, in truth, these international studies through surveys are really a set of national surveys conducted simultaneously with identical methodological instruments (questionnaires, samples, fieldwork, etc.), given that the ultimate goal is to obtain a comparison of countries or regions.

The first transnational, transcultural or international surveys, despite being largely limited to a few Western countries, represented an effort in which fieldwork was prolonged over several years, and the results were not published for still more years (see Table 1). Hadley Cantril was an American social psychologist and a key pioneer researcher about polling methods and social perception, establishing the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR) at Princeton in 1940 under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. OPOR studied the American and other countries public opinion along World War II at the service of the Roosevelt and the allied countries governments (Reference GeerGeer, 2004). In short, the first steps of international surveys not only opened up a new type of research between the ‘50s and ‘70s but also faced numerous challenges and problems related to the translation of questionnaires, the credibility of the constructs, the representativeness of samples, comparability, homogenisation, reliability and validity of the instruments of measure and the results, etc (Reference Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik and WarnerHoffmeyer-Zlotnik & Warner, 2014; Reference JohnsonJohnson, 2015; Reference Szalai, Petrella and RokkanSzalai, Petrella, & Rokkan, 1977; Reference Verba and VallierVerba, 1971).

The 1970s opened up a new phase in the development of international or transnational surveys with the establishment of regular series of surveys on social and political attitudes and behaviours (Reference Norris, Robinson and LandmanNorris, 2018). In 1973, after some pilots, Eurobarometer began biannual surveys in European countries that in later years were emulated by other regions on all continents, undoubtedly because of the reduced costs and time required as well as increased local capacities to implement said projects (Reference Lupu and MichelitchLupu & Michelitch, 2018). The different international barometers make it possible not only to compare countries from different parts of the world but also to detect social changes occurring in public opinion (see Table 2). They offer results and databases not only to demonstrate transparency but also to make possible their use and analysis by researchers and any interested parties. As such, large databases managed by universities and research centres have been created that, in addition to serving as repositories of national and transnational surveys, are executing the work of dissemination and training for their maximum use, especially in the scientific community, for example: ICPSR, GESIS, NSD and UKDAFootnote ¹ (Reference Kruse and ThestrupKruse & Thestrup, 2017).

Materials and methods

This study is interested in analysing the treatment of social research conducted regarding transnational public opinion in public policy, whether it is mentioned, and what is considered if so. In focusing our interest on southern European Union countries, we selected the most prominent international social research conducted using surveys in which the said countries participate and consulted documents in which public policy was expressed.

The selection of international surveys corresponded with the criteria highlighted in international social research using comparable representative national surveys that are currently active in Europe and have been consolidated throughout the second half of the twentieth century, reaching notoriety in the scientific community and in databases. Specifically, GESIS – Leibniz Institute for Social SciencesFootnote ² conducts an on-going historical review based on the research conducted by Donsbach (Reference Donsbach2012 and Reference Donsbach and Mazzoleni2016), which has served as a main source for us.

The four international studies selected and highlighted are as follows, in chronological order of appearance: Eurobarometer (EB), the World Values Survey (WVS), the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the European Social Survey (ESS). Eurobarometer was initiated in 1973 by the European Commission with two standard annual studies to which other research modalities were added (special, flash and qualitative). The World Values Survey was started in 1981 by a network of social scientists, and it has reached six waves of surveys in nearly 100 countries, representing 90% of the world's population. The International Social Survey Programme began in 1984 with annual international surveys that have come to include up to 40 countries with topics related to social issues that have been repeated over time. Finally, the European Social Survey, was initially funded by the European Science Foundation in 2002 with a biennial periodicity, covers some 30 European countries (see Table 3).

While Italy has been included in all of the Eurobarometers, Spain and Portugal were incorporated after their signing of accession in 1985, specifically as of Standard Eurobarometer 24Footnote ³. In the World Values Survey, the participation of southern European countries has been very minimal except for Spain, which has participated since the second wave; Italy has been present only since the penultimate wave and Portugal in none of the six waves. The participation of the three countries in the International Social Survey Programme has been quite irregular depending on the topic covered by each survey or the circumstances of each country; thus, in the 33 studies conducted up to 2016, Spain, Italy, and Portugal have participated in 23, 16 and 13, respectively. Finally, in the European Social Survey, Spain and Portugal have obtained results in eight rounds held until 2016, whereas Italy has only been present in three of them. To summarise, Spain's participation in the four international projects has been more consistent than that of Italy or Portugal, which have yet to participate in some of them.

In addition to the official bulletins of the three southern European counties, we considered it appropriate to add the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) as a broader reference. The OJEU, previously known as the Official Journal of the European Communities (OJEC), comprises the official source of European Community law and is the responsibility of the European Union (EU) through the Official Publications Office of the European Communities, located in Luxembourg since 1952. In 1998, it became available online (EUR-Lex), where all documents since its founding may be consulted.

Spain's official gazette, in which the laws and other government regulations are published, is known as the Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE) [Official State Gazette]. Its editing, printing, publication and dissemination are entrusted to the Agencia Estatal del Boletín Oficial del Estado [State Agency of the Official State Gazette] under a functional decentralisation system. Although there are precedents from the seventeenth century, Royal Decree 181/2008 established free and open access to the electronic edition, and it is currently possible to consult information dating back to 1960.

The Official Gazette of the Italian Republic, or Gazzetta Ufficiale (GU), contains the legislative texts and regulations in force in Italy. The precursor to the GU was the Gazzetta Piemontese, published since 1797. In January of 2013, approval was granted to make it available digitally to the public free of charge, and it is complete as of 1986.

The Diário da República (DR) is the official publication of the Portuguese government. It has had this name since 1976, although its precursors date back to 1715. As of 1 July 2006, detailed information has been available online with contents dating back to 1974.

In summary, these four official sources of laws and regulations of the European Union and the countries of the south constitute the documentary basis of decision-making in public policy by the different governments (see Table 4). Additionally, these publications have been made more extensive over time, containing historical series, and they are more transparent in that they can be publicly available on the Internet and even increasingly accessible by incorporating, in the case of Portugal, simplified language.

Results

The search for the presence of the four international surveys was conducted using the translations of their names and acronyms in four languages (English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese). The four search tools of the different official gazettes allow for precise explorations by strings of words in the full content of the documents since the selected international surveys began except in the Italian case, which has only been available online since 1987. The results obtained through 1 January 2018 are conclusive; the World Values Survey and the ISSP are not mentioned except for a single instance in Spain's BOE and another in the OJEU; meanwhile, Eurobarometer and the European Social Survey are referenced several times in the official gazettes of the three southern European countries although less than once per year. Deserving of special consideration are references to Eurobarometer in the Official Journal of the European Union; the survey is cited nearly 2,000 times, and there are nearly 30 references to the European Social Survey (see Table 5). By country, Italy only makes two references to the international surveys in its GU, versus 12 and 17 references existing in the official gazettes of Portugal and of Spain, respectively.

Of the 31 times we found mentions of one of the four international surveys in the official gazettes of the three southern European countries, only on 11 occasions did they cite survey data. In the rest of the documents, the quotes address other bureaucratic or tangential issues such as appointments, publications, budgets, training courses, collaborations, etc. If any survey is worth highlighting, it is Eurobarometer; when this survey is cited, it is most often to make use of or apply the results. In the OJEU, for which we conducted an analysis of only the most recent 100 documents from 2017, 97% of the documents contain figures or data obtained from the EB.

Conclusions and discussion

The first conclusion resulting from the review of the historical process of globalisation of international research through surveys confirms the immense possibilities opened up not only for comparative studies in the social sciences but also for exploring or constructing a global public opinion that transcends borders (Reference Smith, Fu, Wolf, Joye, Smith and FuSmith & Fu, 2016). Second, the official bulletins and journals consulted for each country completely ignore some of the international social research highlighted, indicating not only the rejection of the research as a resource for designing public policy but also the missed opportunity to contextualise and draw comparisons across countries and even to evaluate the results with a periodic nature (Fortin-Rittberger, Howell, Quinlan, & Todosijevic, Reference Fortin-Rittberger, Howell, Quinlan, Todosijevic, Wolf, Joye, Smith and Fu2016). Third, in addition to noting the infrequent mentions of these studies, they could be classified in most cases as formal references that do not contribute anything to the public policy of the countries. Meanwhile, the role played by Eurobarometer in public policy in the European Union is worth mentioning, where it is profusely cited in OJEU documents and with explicit references to results in practically all cases. This is perhaps the only example for which a more detailed content analysis would be warranted to determine the impact of this international survey on EU public policy.

The challenge of transforming this weakness of international surveys and their limited impact on national public policy in strategies to improve their situation is worth consideration. First, the involvement of public administrations in the different countries should be elaborated. In the case of Spain, we must recognise the decisive efforts to provide our country with a greater presence in these international studies by people such as Professors Juan Díez Nicolás and Mariano Torcal Loriente and institutions such as the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas [Centre for Sociological Research] or the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. However, it will be necessary to transcend the academic environment in order for national policies to echo the value added by these international surveys. Second, the field of comparative public policy that, as mentioned above, is beginning to appear in studies and manuals should be developed. This would reinforce the theoretical idea in political science that relates public opinion to public policy in a global context with empirical data provided by international surveys.

In this sense, we present some indications to improve the relationship between international public opinion surveys and public policy aimed at the main actors involved. The academic world should open to public administrations by inviting them to their activities and meetings where they discuss this type of research is addressed. Likewise, the institutions responsible for international surveys should incorporate a section dedicated to spread examples of national public policies where the results have been transferred or mentioned. And finally, public administrations should include in training programmes of their public officials and specialised civil servants, aspects related to international surveys to know them and know how to apply them to public policies in all levels, national, regional or local.