Politicians rarely take a step without them.
Corporations do them monthly.
Presidents and Prime Ministers check them daily.
Surveys and polls. They drive decision making across all sorts of organizations, corporations, governments and even palaces. Polls inform a range of strategies, whether related to how countries build support for reform, to how organizations move the needle on behavior change (think smoking, HIV, and drunk driving), to how companies choose the colors of a box of cereal and decide on the jingo that is intended to sell that cereal (crafted specifically to never leave your memory)!
The World Bank Group is no stranger to opinion polling; it’s been gathering the views of stakeholders for more than a decade. In an effort to systematize this commitment to collecting feedback, the Country Opinion Survey Program was mandated in 2012, to measure and track the views of the World Bank Group’s critical stakeholders—opinion leaders from governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, the private sector, media and civil society in its client countries.
The program’s intent is to: provide a feedback loop for country teams, allow the WBG to track independently and systematically the views of its work, and to identify gaps in the WBG’s alignment with country/regional level priorities.
The Country Surveys explore key issues such as: How fast? How aligned? How relevant? How respectful? How effective? What’s the WBG’s impact on results? Who is using our knowledge? The WBG is willing to hear it all from stakeholders: the good, the bad and the in-between.
Now the Country Opinion Survey findings are live on its new website, where data from the last two years will be fully available externally, as part of the WBG’s Open Bank Initiative. Users will be able to download data files (including responses to all questions across countries), country reports, and annual global reviews on this website. They will also be able to track survey status across the globe.
You can track the opinions of more than fifteen thousand opinion leaders across the globe, in more than seventy five countries. And that’s just from two years of surveys! By the end of 2014, survey data will be posted from another 43 countries across the globe. Again: the good, the bad and the in-between!
These data are an essential part of a true feedback loop: collect the data objectively and independently, then share it openly with stakeholders to problem solve the big development challenges and difficult resource decisions that we face.
The map below shows 70 countries surveyed between July 2011 - June 2013 and 43 more countries where surveys are currently being conducted. For more information about each country, please go to countrysurveys.worldbank.org for an interactive version of the map.
Join the Conversation