General opinion survey of the Maltese population

Abstract

The Maltese population has experienced rapid developments in recent years, with political, socio-cultural, and economic changes contributing to increased property construction, rising social inequality and individualistic values, and racial intolerance, amongst others (Baldacchino, 2016; European Commission, 2019). In light of these changes, the Faculty for Social Wellbeing sought to gather data about the general population’s opinions on a number of diverse topics, with the aim of gaining insight into prevailing opinions within the public sphere, as well as informing policy development and future research initiatives. The aim of opinion surveys, also known as opinion polls, is to provide information about how individuals’ perceptions and preferences about a particular topic are distributed (Fertig & Schmidt, 2011). Opinion polls may commonly be connotated with research that seeks to gather information, which is focussed on political issues or marketing, which aim to understand voters’ intentions in general elections or consumers’ purchasing habits. The landmark opinion polls designed by George Gallup to understand political attitudes are credited with establishing the use of random systematic sampling in order to generalise results to an entire population. However, academic opinion research - particularly cross-national comparison initiatives such as the Eurobarometer or World Values Survey - provides unique advantages in that it is independent of economic or governmental influence, in addition to being guided by rigorous and ethical principles of social science research (Heath et al., 2005). Furthermore, opinion research is crucial in order to construct an “accurate picture of our diverse and changing population” that can inform decision-making at higher levels with information which would otherwise not be readily available (Office for National Statistics, 2020, para. 7). The present study sought to expand on existing public opinion survey research which has previously been carried out by a number of entities such as the Eurobarometer. Such existing surveys, whilst being methodologically sound and representative of the population in the majority of cases, do not offer the necessary in-depth level of analysis according to individual countries. As noted by a spokesperson on behalf of the Eurobarometer surveys, “Eurobarometer is not a tool to collect statistics, it rather provides a snapshot of public opinion perceptions at a given time” (Spinant, 2019). Therefore, the present study aimed to conduct a more detailed survey of Maltese individuals’ opinions about a number of topics, whilst gathering relevant sociodemographic data and ensuring that the sample was equally representative of the general population in terms of age, gender, and residential district.