Survey of Peoples' Attitudes Towards Their Municipality, 1996

This is a project that was carried through by SSB on assignment from the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. The aim of the survey was to illuminate the relationships between individuals and their municipality. The survey grasps three sides of individual relations to the municipality - the individual as consumer, payer and citizen.

A similar survey was carried through in 1993. The sample from 1993 has been used as a basis for drawing the sample for the 1996-survey, so that a considerable portion of the sample constitute a panel.

The data collection was carried through in two phases, in which the first phase was carried through by telephone interviews and the second phase was by postal questionnaires. Variables 1-153 are from the telephone phone part of the survey while the variables 154-398 are from the postal part.

The data material should create opportunities for analyzing the consequences of various municipal sizes. Hence, the sample has been stratified in accordance with municipal size. In order to achieve a sufficiently large number of respondents within each municipal size it has been drawn about as many respondents from each size category. The material is representative if one analyzes the various stratums individually or compares them, but if one is to merge the various stratums one has to weigh the material because the various stratums have different sizes in the Norwegian population.