Civilitas Polls

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Polls, 2 November 2011

With the support of Norwegian and German governments, a few months ago the Civilitas Foundation began to conduct polls throughout Armenia. The results of the polls will be made available to the media and will serve as the topic of public discussions. The aim of the project is threefold:

The first and most important is to validate the value of an individual citizen’s opinion. By creating a reliable and sustainable mechanism for collecting the opinion of real people of all ages and in all geographic areas, both participants in the polls as well as those who read about them and see their opinion reflected there, will begin to believe that individual opinion and public opinion have value.

Polls, 2 November 2011

The second aim is to offer reliable public opinion frequently and consistently in order to validate the value of public opinion as a tool for policy formation.

Finally, a third aim of the polling process is to broaden the scope of public debate – by asking new questions, and by offering new and different answers to old, standard questions. Both are crucial if Armenian society is to continue to be engaged in public discourse, without disdainfully casting aside old theories and conclusions.

Of course, good, reliable, objective polls also serve many other purposes. There is no better way to gauge societal transformation, changes in attitudes, hopes and expectations, the development of new values and new customs and patterns of behavior, without gathering responses to frequent, continuous sociological questions.

METHODOLOGY

Committed to making the polling process as accurate, transparent and reliable as possible, Civilitas has collaborated with the Caucasus Research and Resource Centers (CRRC). The CRRC experts of the central office located in Tbilisi have offered expert guidance in staff selection, training and question formation and poll processes.

The CRRC experts have also participated in the selection of respondents in order to assure the formation of a demographically-representative sample of respondents who trust the process and will offer honest responses, without fears or suspicions about how their response will be taken.

QUESTIONS

Questions are asked of 1000 households throughout Armenia within a two-day period.

The first sets of questions have covered a variety of subjects. The graphs below represent responses.

During the recent poll more than 1000 households were asked questions about their readiness to temporarily or permanently leave the country.

The questions were asked in the second week of October, during a month when public discourse and private chatter centered on this topic. Both the National Statistical Service numbers about travel, as well as individual anecdotal stories seemed to bear out the popular conviction that emigration is no longer possible to rein in.

The responses were interesting. Nearly half have considered temporary emigration, but almost one-fourth of the respondents would consider permanent emigration. Interestingly, of those who have considered permanently leaving the country, 23 percent have family members living abroad. Of the NOs, 27 percent have family member living abroad. ‘Abroad’ often did not include Russia as far as some respondents were concerned.

In mid-September, Civilitas asked about independence. A full 89 percent said they considered Independence Day a day of celebration. And 86 percent said they were proud to be a citizen of Armenia. A large number (68 percent) would vote again for independence, if the referendum were held on the day of the survey.

Earlier in May, Civilitas asked questions about Internet use. Forty-six percent of the respondents did not use the Internet, while 21 percent used it every day. As the main reason for not using the Internet 38 percent of those who did not use Internet mentioned that their financial means were not sufficient, 32 percent mentioned they did not have a computer and 19 percent did not need it.