Sociobarometers, compiled by SOSTE Finnish Society for Social and Health (previously the Finnish Federation for Social Welfare and Health), have been carried out annually since 1991. Various service providers (e.g. local social services, health care centres, employment offices, Social Insurance Institution authorities) evaluate the state of services and changes in welfare of citizens. Some current social policy themes are also included. The FSD collections cover data from 1994.
This wide-ranging survey charted expert opinion on the welfare of Finnish citizens, and on the present state of welfare services. The respondents were managers or management groups of municipal social services offices, municipal health centres (primary health care), employment offices, and local offices of the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela).
There were separate questionnaires for each organisational sector, with somewhat differing questions for each.
The questions common to all organisations studied perceptions of the changes in the number of staff, difficulty of recruiting skilled staff, sufficiency of human resources, action taken to improve the well-being of staff at work, and the possibilities of ensuring service provision to citizens with the existing resources. The respondents evaluated welfare of population in the municipality, and charted the positive and negative developments in the situations of some population groups.
Views on how the services provided corresponded to the needs of the citizens were surveyed as well as the role of various actors in preventive services. Cooperation between the respondents' organisation and other bodies and actors was surveyed. The importance of so-called extensive welfare responsibility and how this responsibility had been accomplished in the municipality was studied. Opinions on the significance of various actors and institutions in the welfare of citizens were investigated. Involvement in and views on joint service points and public employment and business services were charted. Situation of the organisation in terms of changes in services was investigated.
The questions not common to all organisations charted, among others, financial situation of the municipality, increase/decrease in financial resources allocated for services, role of social, health and economic policies in municipal decision-making, models of social service provision used in the municipality, increase/decrease in out-tasking, views on the reform of the labour market subsidy, opinions on basic income, importance of various suggestions related to improving the circumstances of the worst off, vitality of the principle of universalism in Finnish social policy practices, municipal and public service reform, and competitive tendering of services.
Background variables included the respondent's organisational sector and occupation/title as well as educational background of the organisation's managing director, and type of municipality.
The Sociobarometer 2007 questionnaire was sent to the social services offices, health centres (primary health care), and "full service" employment offices of all Finnish municipalities (the Åland Islands excluded) as well as the offices of the Social Insurance Institution that were open every weekday. The questionnaire was addressed to managing directors. The survey was mainly conducted as an online survey with separate questionnaires for each organisational sector. The data for health centres were collected as a postal survey because email addresses for some respondents were not available. In the reminder round, all respondents received the questionnaires by mail. The questionnaires for social administration offices were sent to municipalities according to the situation in 2006 (prior to the decrease in the number of municipalities in 2007). The six largest towns, Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa, Oulu, and Turku, were exceptional in the data collection, as they were sent more than one qustionnaire per organisational sector. The Kainuu region formed another exception in that three questionnaires were sent to the social services in the region as a result of centralised social administration.