Seven global research resources that you will fall in love with
AKAS is often asked by clients to provide insights into populations from across the world. This can be an extremely expensive area to embark upon if primary research is commissioned to understand the public’s knowledge, attitudes, concerns, media habits and behaviours.
The good news is that freely available secondary online research resources can be used if you're under pressure for time and budget. Below we have put together a short guide to seven (out of the numerous) global audience resources that we frequently use at AKAS.
1. Ipsos Global What Worries the World
This quarterly report covers 26 countries and interviews 21 000 16-64 year olds. Respondents are asked about whether their country is on the right track, and the topics they find most worrying for their nation. The PowerPoint presentations and tables are available free on the Ipsos site.
2. Gallup World Poll Gallup are the godfather of surveys and the range of their global offer proves it. The Gallup World Poll is their flagship global product: it covers over 160 countries and more than 100 issues. You’ll have to pay to gain full access to all the World Poll data. However, Gallup generously offer much of their global data via articles and reports on the site.
3. Pew Global Attitudes Project Every year the highly respected Pew Research Center carries out a Global Attitudes Survey. In 2017, this was conducted in 38 countries. The reports and simplified tables are freely available. The subjects covered include country concerns, globalisation, climate change, immigration and democracy.
4. World Bank The World Bank is one of our clients and we are constantly impressed by their research and open data policy. The World Bank Open Data portal is a truly impressive data set covering over 80 variables for over 200 countries across the world. In addition, the World Bank’s Country Opinion Surveys of opinion leaders and opinion formers is a real gift to the international community. In the last 3 years alone there have been over 70 of these surveys.
5. Globescan Globescan carry out a variety of global surveys with particular strengths in environmental surveys and corporate social responsibility. It is worth regularly reviewing their press releases, as there’s always something interesting.
6. Gallup International / Worldwide International Network of Market Research End of Year survey – Gallup International should not be confused with Gallup. They are different research houses. Gallup International carries out an annual end-of-year survey. In 2016 this covered 69 countries and asked nearly 70,000 respondents their views about the year ahead and other topical concerns.
7. Reuters Digital News Report For anyone interested in news media habits, there’s no better resource than the Reuters Digital News Report, which has been published every year since 2012. AKAS was involved in the first study. For the 2017 iteration, 70,000 people were surveyed across 36 markets on five continents.
If you would like to follow up on the topics discussed in this article, please contact Luba Kassova or Richard Addy on contact@akas.london
