The Comparative Interest Group-survey project: design, practical lessons, and data sets
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The Comparative Interest Group‑survey project: design, practical lessons, and data sets Jan Beyers1 · Danica Fink‑Hafner2 · William A. Maloney3 · Meta Novak2 · Frederik Heylen1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This article discusses the methodology and practice behind planning and executing the Comparative Interest Group-survey project (CIG-survey). The CIG-survey includes surveys among national populations of organized interests in 9 European countries and at the European Union level. Although surveys are a useful and reliable way to collect data on a variety of topics, there are also numerous pitfalls and challenges in surveying interest groups, especially across multiple countries. Despite the prominent use of surveys in interest group research, systematic reflections on this method are scarce and data sets are not always properly archived or openly accessible. This article elaborates upon the practical implications and reflects on the lessons learnt during from the implementation of the CIG-survey. Moreover, we highlight how the fuzzy boundaries of interest communities obfuscate sampling and that surveying interest organizations requires researchers to navigate through a specific organizational context to reach and motivate respondents. We also demonstrate how a careful survey plan can positively affect response rates and enable the creation of robust comparative data sets. Keywords Surveying interest groups · Sampling interest groups · CIG-survey project · Comparative research
Introduction Analysing the management, political strategies and organizational development of interest groups is vital to get a better understanding of systems of interest representation. Studying organized interests from different countries also adds considerably to our * Jan Beyers [email protected] 1
Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp, Sint Jacobstraat 2, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium
2
University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
3
University of Newcastle, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
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comparative knowledge, especially when we are interested in the activities of national and European interest groups in multilevel policymaking. This paper outlines the Comparative Interest Group-survey project that addressed these issues (CIG-survey hereafter). The CIG-survey is an offspring of the INTEREURO project (2011–2015) that entailed the mapping and surveying of EU-level interest associations (see www.inter euro.eu for the publicly available data archive). Building on this successful experience we decided to strengthen the comparative leverage of the project by replicating it in several European countries, and hence, the CIG-survey project was launched. The core of the project is funded by grants from the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO-V), the Slovenian Research Agency and the European Research Council (ERC); separate national CIG-surveys depended on grants from national research agencies. Herein we present the methodology and some of the lessons drawing from these projects. T
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