The politician panel consists of elected politicians, mainly from local level. Members of the panel participate in different online surveys a few times a year. The purpose of the panel is to track opinions among policy-makers. The panel is administered by Åbo Akademi University's Social Science Research Institute and is part of the Finnish Research Infrastructure for Public Opinion (FIRIPO) funded by the Academy of Finland. The recruiting of members for the panel began in 2020, and the panel currently has over thousand participants. Information for recruiting new respondents is available from the Information and Result Service provided by the Ministry of Justice. The politician panel offers new tools for examining mechanisms underlying democratic decision-making.
The questionnaire surveys the opinions of municipal decision-makers on municipal policy and the functioning of democracy in Finland. The respondents are municipal councilors. The data was collected as part of the Politician Panel, which is part of The Finnish Research Infrastructure for Public Opinion (FIRIPO).
First, respondents were asked general questions about Finnish democracy and society. Respondents were then asked to place themselves on the left-right axis and were asked about their views on how much power certain actors have in decision-making in municipalities. Next, they were asked about their satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in Finland and asked to respond to statements related to politics and society. Finally, statements were made on civic participation and cooperation between municipalities and residents.
Background variables include party membership, size of municipality of residence, age, gender, mother tongue, education level and electoral district.
Around 95% of the Finnish municipal councilors were invited to join the panel, which totaled 8999 at the time of the invitation in spring 2020. After the 2021 municipal elections, a new recruitment process was carried out to remove 338 people from the panel who had lost their councilor place, and an invitation was sent by email to 3888 new councilors to register for the panel. Of the new councilors, 436 people enrolled to the panel. An invitation to participate in the survey was sent by email to the people on the panel.