KOLFU 2012 - The local and regional councils survey

KOLFU is a survey directed to all members of the 20 regional/county councils and 290 municipal councils in Sweden (in total about 13,500 individuals). KOLFU was conducted for the first time in 2008 and the second time in 2012. The total number of respondents in 2012 was 10,491.

KOLFU was administrated by researchers from University of Gothenburg, while the company Detector AB was responsible for the field work. The survey was carried out within the project "Swedish politicians [Svenska politiker]". Mikael Gilljam was the project leader and David Karlsson the project coordinator.

KOLFU comprise questions about the councillors' social background, attitudes towards political issues, views on democracy and political work in their own municipalities and regions.

Purpose:

The aim of KOLFU is to survey Swedish local and regional politicians' views on democracy and politics.

The KOLFU-survey was mainly conducted through a web-survey. The field work was carried out in the following way: In phase one, e-mail addresses to as many councillors as possible were assembled. In an e-mail, the respondents were given the opportunity to respond to the questionnaire on the Web. Councillors who lacked an e-mail address were sent a paper questionnaire by post. Councillors with e-mail addresses could also ask to be sent a postal questionnaire. Respondents received repeated reminders through e-mail, postal mail and via telephone.