Survey on the Images of Foreign Countries and Current Topics (Harvard Dataverse Version)

This survey, based on the grant of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (“A Study of the Mechanism of Preference Formation of Japanese Public on Foreign Policy,” number: 23243030), is a national online public opinion survey conducted monthly from October 2011 to September 2013 in 24 waves by Waseda University Research Institute of Contemporary Japanese Systems (Director of the institute: Masaru Kohno, Professor of the Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University). The survey included panel sample that participated in the survey continuously and fresh sample that selected anew every month (the panel series consisted of two, the first participating in waves 1 to 12 and the second participating in waves 13 to 24). Additionally, one mail survey was conducted in November 2012 using common questions to make a comparison between survey modes possible. The purpose of this survey is to study the perceptions and evaluations of the Japanese general public concerning defense, foreign policy, and foreign economic relations, and how these perceptions and evaluations changed over time. The monthly survey included such survey items as: how favorable do the Japanese people feel towards different countries; to what degree do, in their opinion, such powers as the USA, or China, or such international organizations as the UN, have influence in the world or on Japan; do they think that Japan’s relations with other countries are moving in the desirable direction or not; and how do they evaluate the Japanese government handling the issues of foreign policy.