EUROBAROMETER SURVEYS

Eurobarometer surveys for DGX: Public-opinion analysis for the European Commission was conducted by INRA (Europe), a European network of market and public-opinion research agencies.

The basic sample design applied in all member states was a multistage random (probability) design. In each EU country, a number of sampling points were drawn, with probability proportional to population size (for the total coverage of the country) and to population density. The points were drawn systematically from each of the ‘administrative regional units’ after stratification by individual unit and type of area. They thus represented the whole territory of the member states according to EUROSTAT-NUTS II (or equivalent) and according to the distributions of the resident populations of the respective EU nationalities in terms of metropolitan, urban, and rural areas. In each of the selected sampling points, a starting address was drawn at random. Further addresses were selected at every iST-th address by standard random-route procedures. In each household, the respondent was drawn at random. All interviews were face-toface in people's homes and in the appropriate national language. The samples usually involved just over 1,000 respondents per country (except for Luxembourg and Northern Ireland), and megasurveys increased the number of respondents to just over 3,000 per country.

For all information about Eurobarometer questionnaires, data sets, published reports, and technical fieldwork details, see europa.eu.int. Data are available from the Zentral Archiv (Universitat Koln), as well as the ICPSR and Essex data archives.