Research areas

How do social identities, norms, and values affect human attitudes and decision making? What are the sources of political legitimacy, and how can they be measured and identified empirically? How is the state of representative democracy - do citizens get what they want and do they get it equally?

With an emphasis on survey experimental techniques, this research unit takes a broad, multidisciplinary approach to basic research questions in fields such as political behaviour, behavioral democratic theory, experimental economics, and judicial politics.

Scientific coordinators 2020 are Yvette Peters, Erik Knudsen and Åsta Dyrnes Nordø, the unit is co-coordinated with the Political communication unit.

How do people discuss, read and share political issues? How are people affected by political rhetoric, of what they read in the news and by the people they interact with online? How can we study people’s communicative behavior online? How does the selective exposure to news in online media affect people’s attitudes and political preferences and voting behavior? To what extent do people trust various media and why?

These kind of research questions lay the foundation of the interdisciplinary research unit of political communication, which combine researchers from political science, political rhetoric, media studies and psychology.

Scientific coordinators 2020 are Yvette Peters, Erik Knudsen and Åsta Dyrnes Nordø, the unit is co-coordinated with the Political communication unit.

This research unit focuses on Norwegians' attitudes to climate and environmental issues. We collect data on everything from climate change worry to attitudes towards wind power, oil extraction, and microplastics. The group has experience using both open- and close-ended survey questions as well as survey experiments.

We think it is particularly interesting to investigate changes in people's attitudes over time.

Some of the results from the KM group are published at https://energiogklima.no/tema/folk-mener/

Scientific coordinators are Endre Tvinnereim, Gisela Böhm og Thea Gregersen.

Migration, extremism and diversity are core societal challenges in advanced contemporary democracies. This thematic research unit collects data about Norwegian citizens’ perceptions, opinions, and reactions to these phenomena, and are part of project teams that also examines them in a comparative context. We seek to understand sources and dynamics of intergroup attitudes, how migration and cultural diversity affect citizen’s attitudes and their political preferences, as well as the causes and consequences of nativism, extremism, and populism.

Against this backdrop, we are currently engaged in studies of Norwegians’ imaginations and experiences of the refugee crisis (IMEX), the challenges of Muslim inclusion (TERMS), and patterns of citizen mobilization among far right political initiatives.

Scientific coordinators are Hege Høivik Bye and Lise Bjånesøy.

How do citizens evaluate the performance of local, regional, and national governments? What motivates their vote choices in different types of elections? What do citizens think about the ongoing municipal and county reforms?

This research unit investigates citizens' opinions about what they value and expect from political representatives at multiple levels of government. These are important issues given that there are so many structural reforms with territorial dimensions underway in Norway. Therefore, this cluster aims to understand citizen attitudes toward multi-level democracy, as well as to inform public debates surrounding the various reforms. 

Scientific coordinators are Anne Lise Fimreite and Arjan Schakel.

In Norway, health is highly prioritized, as both universal and public health care of high quality, and a focus on health related research. The thematic research unit on health wishes to use the Citizen panel to gain insight on the public’s view on questions like these:

What does the population think is fair distribution of health care? Which patient groups and what diseases do the citizens think should be prioritized? Should circumstances like lifestyle or individual efforts matter for which public care they should receive? How is information and advice about health from the health authorities, researchers and health personnel perceived?  What is necessary for the information to be understood? Which advisors do people trust, and which advice do they wish to follow? Which experiences do people have with health care?

The Citizen panel can give us valuable information tied to the citizens self-experienced health condition, challenges with access to and use of health services, and attitudes the citizens have facing research ethical challenges tied to health research. The health unit was paused for a bit, but is now in the process of being revitalised, especially with covid19-related research projects.