DOI: 10.3886/icpsr35551.v1
title: Afrobarometer Round 5: The Quality of Democracy and Governance in Lesotho, 2012
title: Version 1

description: The Afrobarometer is a comparative series of public attitude surveys that collects and disseminates data regarding Africans' views on democracy, governance, the economic, civil society, and related issues. The data are collected from nationally representative samples in face-to-face interviews in the language of the respondent's choice. Standard topics for the Afrobarometer include attitudes toward and evaluations of democracy, governance and economic conditions, political participation, national identify, and social capital. In addition, Round 5 surveys included special modules on taxation; gender issues; crime, conflict and insecurity; globalization; and social service delivery. The surveys also collect a large set of socio-demographic indicators such as age, gender, education level, poverty level, language and ethnicity, and religious affiliation, as well as political party affiliation. Afrobarometer Round 5 surveys were implemented in 35 countries. This particular data collection was concerned with the attitudes and opinions of the citizens of Lesotho, and also includes a number of "country-specific questions" designed specifically for the Lesotho survey.
description: According to the Afrobarometer Web site, the variables used in the Afrobarometer fall into the following categories: Democracy: Variables examine the popular understanding of, support for, and satisfaction with democracy, as well as any desire to return to (or experiment with) authoritarian alternatives. Respondents' support for democratic institutions is also explored. Governance: Variables examine the demand for (and satisfaction with) effective, accountable, and clean government as well as respondents' judgments of overall governance performances and social service delivery. Elections: Variable examine participation in campaigns and elections, the quality of electoral processes, and respondents' voting intentions. Macro-economics and Markets: Variables examine citizen assessments of national and personal economic and living conditions, the direction of the country, and respondents' evaluations of government's performance in managing the economy and creating jobs. Poverty: Variables examine how often respondents experience shortages of basic essentials (food, water, and medical care) in their daily lives. Indicators of basic living conditions are also included. Social Capital: Variables examine whom respondents trust, respondents' reliance on informal networks and associations, and evaluations of the trustworthiness of institutions. Conflict and Crime: Variables examine perceptions of safety and experiences with crime and violence. Participation: Variables examine respondents' participation in development efforts, voting, political processes, and protests. National Identity: Variables examine how respondents identify themselves relative to ethnicity, class, and nationality. The dataset also includes a wide variety of demographic variables describing the respondent's background, housing conditions, and community.
description: The data are not weighted. However, this collection includes the weight variable WITHINWT that should be used in any analysis. This weight was created to account for individual selection probabilities.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Standardized missing values.; Created online analysis version with question text.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Response Rates: 87.0 percent
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Afrobarometer Round 5: The Quality of Democracy and Governance in Lesotho, 2012
description: Afrobarometer Survey Series
description: face-to-face interview, paper and pencil interview (PAPI) 
Version 2 provides an update to the XML file to ensure that precision after decimal places within the weight variable is preserved.
The collection dates in the data file (DATEINTR) are not consistent with the "Original P.I. Documentation" section of the ICPSR codebook. The data file includes interview dates ranging from 26 November to 29 December 2012. Therefore, the Study Time Period and Collection Date sections of ICPSR's study description reflect these dates.
 Additional information about the Afrobarometer Survey can be found at the Afrobarometer Web site.
description: Citizens of Lesotho aged 18 years or older. Smallest Geographic Unit: District
description: The Afrobarometer uses a clustered, stratified, multi-stage, area 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. This 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.