The Foundation for Municipal Development conducts annual surveys covering opinions on local (municipal) democracy, local government, local economy and services. Respondents are generally local inhabitants, municipal managers and the chairpersons of municipal boards. The data enable comparison between the opinions of the inhabitants on the one hand, and the managers and chairpersons on the other. The surveys also study municipal managers' views on the policies of the Government of Finland and the functionality of local co-operation. The survey series was launched in 1992. The FSD collections cover data from 1992 to 2010.
The survey studied young people's views on Finnish municipalities. Firstly, views on Finnish municipalities as employers were charted by asking the respondents to evaluate the wage level, job variety, holiday entitlement, pension benefits, career opportunities, job security and control, incentives, efficiency, job satisfaction, and general working conditions of municipal employees. Some questions covered management and gender equality in municipalities. The respondents compared municipalities and private sector employers in terms of wages, working conditions, job security, management etc. Opinions were also probed on whether municipalities should increase their attractiveness as employers by increasing task variety, flexibility of working hours, employees' control over their job, and employees' possibilities to have a say in decisions etc.
The respondents were asked whether they would accept a job offered by a municipality, state, private industry or a private services provider. The survey carried a set of attitudinal questions relating to local government democracy, municipal administration, municipal services, municipal employees, their workload, municipal taxation etc. The same questions were presented in another survey targeting the whole Finnish population (FSD2088).
Background variables included whether the respondent or a close relative was or had been a municipal employee, the respondent's gender, age, main activity, education, province and region of residence, household annual gross income, household composition, which political party the respondent would vote for if the parliamentary elections were held at that time, and which party (s)he had voted for in the 2000 municipal elections.
The sampling was conducted in three stages. First, the target population was divided into NUTS2 major regions. In the second stage, the target population within major regions was further divided into municipality types. The municipalities were grouped into municipality types by dividing towns into large and small towns based on the number of inhabitants, and by dividing rural municipalities into three categories based on their economic structure. Based on these strata, a representative sample of municipalities was selected. In the third stage, a number of starting addresses were chosen in each municipality based on the number of inhabitants. The interviews were conducted by randomly selecting a starting point (household) and interviewing one individual in four subsequent households. In each household, an individual who met the gender and age criteria was selected to be interviewed.