This paper presents brief information on the major ‘public’ surveys that have been carried out in New Zealand, especially over the last decade. Other information locates these within the overall framework of opinion and related research in New Zealand.

The listing in section 7 (of nearly 300 surveys) is in alphabetical order of author, then project and then date. Extending and checking the list is an ongoing task.

It is not easy to source surveys that have been carried out. This search began with Statisphere, where at least some government-sourced recent surveys are listed under each Department heading. After that, web searches (using ‘survey’ as the keyword: and related) were carried out on appropriate websites:

• Government departments
• Government ad hoc bodies (e.g. GIAB)
• Local/regional government
• Umbrella organisations (e.g. LGNZ)
• Research funders (e.g. FRST, RSNZ, HRC)
• Market research firms
• University social science departments and research units
• INZ and the NZ national bibliography (and other bibliographical databases).

The list of findings has only minimal details about each survey:

• Author/organisation
• Title
• Approximate date carried out.

This is based on a database in which a wider range of information is included, namely:

• Sponsoring organisation
• Conducting organisation
• Data collection method
• Unit of data collection
• Population covered
• Response rate
• Website or other contact information
• Availability of data or reports
• Subject-matter area.

There are several particular features of surveys that may enhance their value, and wherever any of these is present, this is noted in the survey database:

• Longitudinal studies
• Series
• International/comparative studies.

Surveys are increasingly deployed as a standard tool of governance: researching the needs and views of potential state customers and then assessing the performance of ministries in meeting those needs (or at least in handling the interface). For the social sciences, surveys are also important in recording views and characteristics of people, which would be difficult to measure in any other way, together with the enhanced analytical capacities survey data allows.

There is some difficulty in defining a survey in relation to overlapping social research investigations and other types of study. (This is made even more problematic by the ambiguities of the term itself.) A social or public opinion survey is public, samples from a general population and includes non-administrative information (e.g. attitudes). It is easier to indicate what is not included: namely evaluation studies, qualitative studies, administrative data-collection, limited-purpose customer satisfaction surveys, single-purpose academic studies, etc. Examples of those that employ survey data have been ignored.

One indication of the extent of surveys can be seen in those used by local governments: in a Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) survey (2002/3) most of the councils indicated that random surveys were one of the ‘consultation techniques’ they used.

Web-surveys are entirely ignored, although some valid surveys are in fact accomplished through this format. As one indicator of the prevalence of web-survey formats, a State Services Commission (SSC) report (SSC, 2005: p11) notes that “agencies use the internet in a number of ways to enable public and business to provide feedback on government information, to participate and to be involved in government. The internet is used by 18 agencies (47%) for online surveys. Five agencies (13%) have established online discussion forums that are available to the public or businesses”.

Separate attention is paid to longitudinal and market research studies: see sections 2 and 3 below. Some surveys are carried out as part of a programme: other programmes are now being put in place to store surveys – information about some New Zealand survey research programmes is included in section 5. In addition, SPEaR has set up a ‘data saving and sharing committee’ that is expected to report (inter alia) on policy suggestions concerning survey data.

This listing is intended to form the foundation for several further studies and/or programmes of activity:

• Foundation on which to base decisions concerning the assessing and archiving of raw survey data
• Sociology (and political economy) of the patterns of surveys (topics, clients, contractors: cf. Page, 2006)
• Review of methodological experiences with surveys (design, response characteristics, etc.: cf. Crothers, 1978)
• Normative/policy suggestions re the future planning for (programmes of) surveys
• Development of findings lists of questions, question-wording, etc.
• Development of a bibliography of products
• Investigation of the extent to which surveys are used
• Identification of the relevant NZ literature on surveys and expanding and updating of reviews such as those of Crothers (1978) and Vowles (2004).

A bibliography of nearly 1000 ‘book’ items relating to NZ surveys, attitude studies, etc. sourced from The University of Auckland’s Voyager database is also available.

To provide a basis for comparison with Australian surveys held in the Australian Social Science Data Archive (ASSDA), this archive’s holdings have been analysed in section 6.