The Relation Between Citizens and the Public Authorities, 1985

The purpose of the SSB follow-up survey of the 4th quarter of 1985 was to determine if the extent of public contact with and attitudes towards public authorities had actually changed between 1979 and 1985. Therefore, it was emphasized that the surveys as far as possible, should be similar. The reason for this emphasis was that Statistics Norway (SSB) during March 1979 conducted a comprehensive survey of the relationship between individuals and the public administration. The Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo commissioned the survey, and was responsible for the further analysis of the results. The survey was part of a widely-established research program funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration and Consumer Affairs (FAD). Among other things, based on the results of this survey, FAD conducted a campaign to improve the relationship between the public and the administration, "Aksjon Publikum", in the years between 1982-85. Towards the end of the campaign, FAD wanted to investigate to what extent it had led to changes in public attitudes towards public administration, compared to the survey in 1979. This survey was conducted by Norsk Opinionsinstitutt A/S (Gallup/NOI) in May 1985. Initially, FAD interpreted the results as if there had been a significant deterioration of public attitudes towards public administration. However, it emerged that the change in the figures was largely due to differences in Statistics Norway's survey in 1979 and the NOI survey in 1985. This led to FAD postponing the publication of results from the NOI survey. At the beginning of October 1986, SSB was commissioned by FAD to conduct a new follow-up study for some of the questions in the 1979 survey. The survey, called "The Relation Between Citizens and the Public Authorities, 1985" was conducted in addition to the Labor Force Survey (AKU) in the 4th quarter of 1985.