The Questions

Asking the Right Questions

There is a great deal of classical economic data that record an infinite amount of human transactions, from GDP to unemployment to birth and death rates, and that indicate what human beings are doing. Conversely, there has not been a systematic account of what human beings are thinking. Until now.

The power of the Gallup World Poll lies in asking the right questions. With the goal of establishing the world's foremost public opinion and behavior research platform, Gallup's world-class researchers created the World Poll questionnaire in collaboration with the leading behavioral economists and well-being scientists around the globe.

The question items of the Gallup World Poll measure the most essential and critical thoughts and actions of the world's citizens. The Gallup World Poll surveys global citizens about well-being, war and peace, law and order, hopes and dreams, healthcare, suffering and striving, personal economics, poverty, environmental issues, availability and quality of jobs, and many other economic and social issues.

The Gallup World Poll asks hundreds of core items of all respondents as well as hundreds of region-specific questions around the globe to gauge the unique behavioral climate in the world's different countries and local areas. Gallup asks both the core and region-specific questions over time. This creates a constant flow and update of information and gives World Poll users the ability to compare data and spot key trends. This extensive, continuous survey provides a new access point to the voices, hearts, and minds of the majority of the Earth's population.

Gallup constantly refines and evaluates the question items in an effort to precisely study the opinions and actions of global citizens. Why? Because the Gallup World Poll strives to provide users with the most complete information in each of the stages of Gallup's behavioral economic model for societies, as shown below.

The combination of the core questions and the country- and region-specific items allows the Gallup World Poll to accurately measure key indicators around the globe. These issues correlate with world development indicators such as GDP and brain gain.

Simply put, the Gallup World Poll question items drive understanding of the different correlations between global opinions and behaviors and specific, classical economic data and indicators -- to provide a complete understanding of the world.

Acquire the power to understand and act on what the world is thinking. For more information, please e-mail worldpollpartners@gallup.com or call 202.715.3030 (Washington, D.C.) or +44 (0) 20 7950 4400 (London).