The DEval Opinion Monitor for Development Policy

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda has made the active involvement of citizens in development cooperation (DC) and the German Sustainable Development Strategy more relevant than ever. The Agenda’s ambitious goals, which address such topics as global food security, health, environmental protection, gender equality, education and sustainable production and consumption, will not be achieved without broad public support.

From a normative perspective, too, the support of the general public for any political goals and measures is important. For example, government decision-makers should take the population's views into account when designing policies in order to ensure their acceptance or legitimacy. The same applies to DC as an instrument for implementing the 2030 Agenda.

Equally, civil society organisations rely heavily on citizens’ interest and support in the form of donations and civic engagement. While financial contributions and civic engagement ensure their capacity to operate, public familiarity with and appreciation of these organisations’ work is essential in order to anchor an awareness of global interdependencies in wider society and establish behaviours that are in keeping with the 2030 Agenda.

At present, however, insufficient data and studies are available on the general public's perspective on development policy, DC and global sustainable development, particularly in the wake of current world political developments (e.g. international terrorism, the global refugee movement and the coronavirus pandemic) which have made DC a greater focus of public attention once more. As a result, there is an urgent need to know more about people's knowledge, attitudes and behaviours in relation to these issues. The DEval Opinion Monitor seeks to meet this need for insights, and to provide DC actors with both feedback on public opinion on the topic of DC and sustainable development, and orienting knowledge to guide their strategic approaches and their communication and educational work.

Insights into the population's attitudes towards development policy and global sustainable development make it possible to understand and classify public opinion and the commitment of citizens. This Knowledge allows for them to be taken into account in the design of development policy communication and education work, the promotion of development policy commitment and the strategic progress of development cooperation.

Against this background, the study series "Opinion Monitor Development Policy" examines the following overarching questions:

1. What are the attitudes of the population towards development policy and sustainable development, what do they know about this topic, how are they involved, and how do these factors change over time?

2. What are the characteristics of attitudes, knowledge and commitment?

The Opinion Monitor 2018 was based on survey data from the Aid Attitudes Tracker (AAT), a (panel) study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and based at University College London (UCL). On a six-monthly cycle between 2013 and 2018, around 6,000 people in Germany, France, Great Britain and the USA were interviewed on DC. Since 2019 the study has been continued by the Development Engagement Lab (DEL) project at UCL and the University of Birmingham, and likewise financed by the BMGF. The DEval Opinion Monitor makes use of the DEL survey data.

The AAT, now DEL, panel survey consists of recurring core questions (attitude to DC, changing the budget for DC, etc.) and questions on one-off thematic blocks that are fed in from the DC community. These often relate to current political events (e.g. refugee movements, the Islamic state). The panel survey was conducted every six months for the AAT, and once a year for the DEL project. In order to monitor learning effects from repeated surveys and to obtain data at shorter intervals, the DEL conducts additional surveys several times a year. These are normally based on their own cross-sectional samples and seek responses on core indicators (e.g. attitudes towards DC) and topics of current relevance. Such surveys include the DEL survey on media use and perception in May/June 2019.

In addition to the AAT and DEL surveys, the Opinion Monitor team conducts its own experimental surveys. These investigate how various kinds of information affect attitudes towards DC. The study team also analyses media content for the Opinion Monitor, for which they make use of both existing content-analysis data and their own content analyses.

The DEval Opinion Monitor is supported by a reference group consisting of representatives of state and civil society DC actors. In addition, the study is reviewed by internal and external peer reviewers with expertise in the fields of DC, attitudinal research and social science research methodology.