This is the first survey conducted at the Södertörn University College by the project 'Democracy and Social Transition in the Baltic Sea Region'. To address peoples' perception on social and political changes, the research group selected a number of questions to be asked in the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Major topics were: Political efficacy and political participation, political trust, evaluation of the electoral process, conceptions and evaluation of environmental issues, civil rights and duties, and an evaluation on household economy and economic situation. To acquire comparability with other Citizen Survey Studies conducted at Uppsala Universitey in Sweden and at six university institutes of European countries, the modules are similar to their questions in structure and wordings.

In Lithuania, the two-staged stratified sampling was used to extract the sample. First. Lithuania was divided geographically into 15 strata (10 counties and 5 cities). In Latvia, the entire nation was divided into 113 strata, of which 36 was from Riga, 41 from towns and 36 parishes. The size of the sample in each stratum was based on the proportion of inhabitants. Secondly, samples were extracted in each stratum. The primary sampling points were selected at random from the population registers of the Lithuanian Department of Statistics. Then the primary sampling units were selected using the route-sampling technique. Each seventh household was selected in urban areas and each fifth in rural areas. The secondary sampling units - individuals - were chosen using the next-birthday rule. Not more than 8 respondents were interviewed per one sampling point.

Face-to-face interview

Personlig intervju