What is it?

The Social Barometer of Spain is a continuous assessment of the social situation of Spain, developed by Colectivo Ioé, team specialized on social research and supported by or  Centro de Investigación para la Paz-Peace Research Center (CIP-Ecosocial). With indicators and indexes we aim to offer work tools to think over and debate about the social issues in our country. The Social Barometer of Spain includes on top of the database compiled here and updated on a yearly basis, a book(Barómetro Social de España) --coedited by CIP-Ecosocial y Traficantes de Sueños-- with broader analysis and interpretation. All its contents are Copyleft (free use allowed, as long as the source is mentioned).

What is it about?

The Social Barometer of Spain proposes a 189 social indicators system, all from official sources, and synthetic indexes transparently developed by the authors and open to an active intervention for all users, corresponding to eleven social spheres, offering a global vision of important questions related to welfare.

 Every sphere includes a series of indicators and their evolution since 1994. In its first edition the information reaches 2006. It will be updated on a yearly basis. (Last year updated: 2009). As the evolution of each indicator in an isolated way is not sufficient to capture more complex tendencies, some synthetic indexes have been developed: one for each studied sphere (up to 11) and others for its subspheres or more specific social life dimensions (34). Click here for a comprehensive listing of spheres, dimensions and indicators.

Methodology

This link is open for consulting the selection criteria for the 180 social indicators, as its actual display in the database, and the methodology used to develop the synthetic indexes and the process enabling the users to modify the indexes weighting according to their own criteria. See Social Barometer of Spain Methodology.

How to use the data

For each one of the 11 researched spheres there are two ways to access the data, as follows.

·        Online search. Click on the menu on the left over the field of your interest; it will take you to the listing of all the indicators and synthetic indexes it is composed of. Starting from there, you can access the corresponding data and charts.

·        Downloading the spreadsheet files: for each one of the 11 spheres you can download the complete information, either in .xls format (Excel) or as .ods (Open Office). This will let you work offline on the information, including the possibility of modifying the synthetic indexes weighting, if you do not agree with our proposal.