DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34005
title: Afrobarometer Round 4: The Quality of Democracy and Governance in Malawi, 2008
title: Archival Version

description: The Afrobarometer project was designed to collect and disseminate information regarding Africans' views on democracy, governance, economic reform, civil society, and quality of life. This particular survey was concerned with the attitudes and opinions of the citizens of Malawi. Respondents in a face-to-face interview were asked to rate their president and the president's administration in overall performance, to state the most important issues facing their nation, and to evaluate the effectiveness of certain continental and international institutions. Opinions were gathered on the role of the government in improving the economy, whether corruption existed in local and national government, whether government officials were responsive to problems of the general population, and whether local government officials, the police, the courts, the overall criminal justice system, the National Electoral Commission, and the government broadcasting service could be trusted. Respondents were polled on their knowledge of the government, including the identification of government officials, their level of personal involvement in political, governmental, and community affairs, their participation in national elections, and the inclusiveness of the government. Economic questions addressed the past, present, and future of the country's and the respondents' economic conditions, and respondents' living conditions. Additional topics include the budget session in Parliament, a government pension scheme, a transfer scheme, a rotational system for choosing the president, the two term limit for the president, past presidents in party leadership, an age limit for elected officials, a minimum education requirement to run for president, and the official language. Background variables include age, gender, ethnicity, education, religious affiliation and participation, political party affiliation, language spoken most at home, whether the respondent was the head of household, current and past employment status, whether a close friend or relative had died from AIDS, and language used in interview. In addition, the interviewer's gender, race, and education level is provided.
description: Please visit the Afrobarometer Web site for more information regarding weights.
description: Response Rates: Approximately 91.0 percent.
description: The Afrobarometer uses a clustered, stratified, multi-stage, probability sample design. The sample is designed as a representative cross-section of all citizens of voting age in a given country. The goal is to give every adult citizen an equal and known chance of selection for interview. The objective is reached by (a) strictly applying random selection methods at every stage of sampling and by (b) applying sampling with probability proportionate to population size wherever possible. A randomly selected sample of 1,200 cases allows inferences to national adult populations with a margin of sampling error of no more than plus or minus 3 percent with a confidence level of 95 percent. If the sample size is increased to 2,400, the confidence interval shrinks to plus or minus 2 percent.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Afrobarometer Round 4: The Quality of Democracy and Governance in Malawi, 2008
description: Citizens of Malawi aged 18 years or older, excluding institutions. Smallest Geographic Unit: enumeration area
description: face-to-face interviewThe setup files for this collection may contain characters with diacritical marks used in many African languages.Users may notice that the missing values designations are wider than the variable formats. This is due to optimization of the data. For those variables, there are no cases with those values.Some open-ended responses (variables Q41B1 and Q88E) in the data file are only available in non-English languages specific to Malawi.The original data collection was carried out by the Centre for Social Research, University of Malawi.Additional information about the Afrobarameter Survey can be found at the Afrobarometer Web site.