Afrobarometer Round 4: The Quality of Democracy and Governance in 20 African Countries, 2008 (ICPSR 36359)

Version Date: Jun 13, 2016

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Principal Investigator(s):
Michael Bratton, Michigan State University; Robert Mattes, Institute for Democracy in South Africa; E. Gyimah-Boadi, Ghana Center for Democratic Development

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36359.v1

Version V1

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Summary

The Afrobarometer project was designed to collect and disseminate information regarding Africans' views on democracy, governance, economic reform, civil society, and quality of life. This particular data collection was concerned with the attitudes and opinions of the citizens of 20 nations within the continent of Africa. Respondents in a face-to-face interview were asked to rate their president and the president's administration in overall performance, to state the most important issues facing their nation, and to evaluate the effectiveness of certain continental and international institutions. Opinions were gathered on the role of the government in improving the economy, whether corruption existed in local and national government, whether government officials were responsive to problems of the general population, and whether local government officials, the police, the courts, the overall criminal justice system, and the National Electoral Commission could be trusted. Additionally respondents were polled about their political involvement and opinions on controversial topics. Economic questions addressed the past, present, and future of the country and the respondents' living conditions. Demographic variables include age, gender, ethnicity, education, religious affiliation, language spoken most at home, whether the respondent was the head of the household, current and past employment status, and language used in interview. In addition, the interviewer's gender, race, and education level is provided.

Citation

Bratton, Michael, Mattes, Robert, and Gyimah-Boadi, E. Afrobarometer Round 4: The Quality of Democracy and Governance in 20 African Countries, 2008. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2016-06-13. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36359.v1

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Funding

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Department for International Development (United Kingdom), Mo Ibrahim Foundation, United States Agency for International Development

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

Region

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2008

Date of Collection

2008-03-04 -- 2009-06-24

Data Collection Notes

  1. Additional information on the Afrobarometer Survey can be found by visiting the Afrobarometer Web site.

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Sample

The Afrobarometer uses a clustered, stratified, multi-stage, area probability sample design. The sample is designed as a representative cross-section of all citizens of voting age in a given country. The goal is to give every adult citizen an equal and known chance of selection for interview. This objective is reached by (a) strictly applying random selection methods at every stage of sampling and by (b) applying sampling with probability proportionate to population size wherever possible. A randomly selected sample of 1,200 cases allows inferences to national adult populations with a margin of sampling error of no more than plus or minus 3 percent with a confidence level of 95 percent. If the sample size is increased to 2,400, the confidence interval shrinks to plus or minus 2 percent.

Time Method

Cross-sectional

Universe

Citizens of 20 African countries aged 18 years or older.

Unit(s) of Observation

individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

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Original Release Date

2016-06-13

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Bratton, Michael, Robert Mattes, and E. Gyimah-Boadi. Afrobarometer Round 4: The Quality of Democracy and Governance in 20 African Countries, 2008. ICPSR36359-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2016-06-13. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36359.v1

2016-06-13 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Created online analysis version with question text.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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Weight

The data are not weighted, however, this collection contains the weight variables WITHINWT, COMBINWT, and ACROSSWT that should be used in any analysis. Weights were created to account for individual selection probabilities.

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Notes