Local self-governance reform in Georgia - achievements, and challenges, 2015

20 Nov 2015

The goal of the research project was to study the attitudes of Georgian population regarding a reform of local self-government started in 2013-2014 years and assess objective outcomes of the reform.

Following objectives’ implementation was settled to achieve the project goal:

• Reveal the main characteristics and indicators of the local self-government reform through the qualitative sociological research;
• Develop the research tool that will measure the peculiarities of the ongoing process of local self-government reform;
• Study the public opinion on local self-government reform through the population of Georgia, through a mass survey;
• Develop a consolidated analytical report in which the attitudes of Georgian population regarding the local self-government reform and evaluation of objective (observable) outcomes of the reform will be presented.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods of sociological research were used to achieve the goal and objectives of the research;

The mentioned objective was carried out by using focus-groups (group discussions) method. 3 group discussions were conducted in total, 2 of them at the beginning of the quantitative research ( mass survey) and 1 – after the completion of the interview after receiving the primary data.

3000 citizens of Georgia were interviewed using the face-to-face interview in the frames of quantitative research; Sampling frame was a database of voters defined for 2014 local self-governmental elections. According to the sampling size, the results of the research are representative for whole Georgia, for separate regions (10 regions in total) and for Tbilisi, as well as for gender and age directions and etc.

During the field works a statistician created data matrix using the data analysis program – SPSS. After the completion of field works the statistician prepared obtained data for the further analysis that included the formalization (coding) of each open question in the questionnaire and then their “cleaning”. Afterward, the processed data was developed in the SPSS database, based on which the statistical processing and analysis of the data obtained from the survey were carried out using different methods.