Public Opinion and Media Research

Series

The series generally organizes survey documentation in chronological order, and thus documentation of each research project might be found across a number of files. For example, the Timescale 1972 2/1 and Timescale 1972 2/2 surveys can be found in two different files, because survey questions concerned programs broadcast on two different days. File names preserve the original research dossier names, and the keywords that follow provide reference points to the main related research areas. The keywords are followed by contents lists of the files, and where a data file exists, this is also highlighted. At present, these can be partly or wholly reconstructed. Where there is no note of such, no researchable data file exists.

From the time of its founding, the TK/MKI’s main profile concerned media research, which played a defining role throughout its history. Media research projects can be divided into two main groups: daily public surveys, and those dealing with media provision, media consumption habits, and targeted surveys of how the public perceived individual programs. Radio and television programs’ listenership and viewership were studied using the ‘diary’ method. The most important types of public opinion research were value studies, and political and economic public opinion surveys. The Institute was already carrying out research into the major characteristics of public perceptions and public opinion in the 1970s. Typical themes included: social inequalities, social stratification, mobility, national consciousness, the situation of Hungarians living outside the borders, historical knowledge, Hungary’s foreign policy orientation, Soviet-American relations, relations between Socialist bloc states, minorities in Hungary and, on occasion, topical political questions. From the 1980s onwards, political public opinion research became more frequent and methodologically diverse and thus, in tandem, the research themes also changed significantly. Instant surveys carried out over the telephone were used more and more often, as were stratified samples. Political public opinion research now focused on a broad range of public opinion and topical questions, such as Chernobyl, AIDS, Soviet-American summits, perestroika and glasnost, and political changes in the Socialist bloc states. From 1988 on, in practice, only instant surveys designed to immediately sound out public opinion were carried out, often a number of times per week. Economic public opinion research focused on opinions on prices, wages and incomes, buying habits and difficulties, shortages, saving habits, national and individual economic perspectives, and housing. By the mid-1970s, the Institute’s researchers had worked out a barometer to measure changes in the public economic mood, which aggregated responses to questions on the individual’s and the national economic situation into an index number. The value of the index was measured quarterly, and thus the series between 1975 and 1989 illustrates the changes in economic mood over this period. The series currently contains documentation of 400 independent research projects.

A very limited number of documents were destroyed in the course of compiling the series. Within the series, date files are on a separate list; on the list of paper documents it is mentioned if the relevant data file is available.

Expected

Fundamentally chronological, research projects found later were attached to the end.

Not Restricted

Digital data can only be read with SPSS software available at a designated work station in OSA Research Room

April, 2013.