Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science+Business Media B.V.. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
This paper assesses local e-government maturity in the Iberoamerican community. Sixty Andorran, Argentinian, Brazilian, Chilean, Colombian, Costa Rican, Mexican, Portuguese, Spanish, and Uruguayan cities were considered in this study. A demographic criterion was adopted to define the municipalities observed within those countries and a three-dimensional model was used to evaluate each municipal website. Then, we conclude that local e-government still has a substantial room for improvement in the region and that population density is relevant to explain local e-government maturity, albeit only in its intrinsic Information and Participation dimensions.
Cross-national survey data shows that for a significant share of European citizens, corruption is acceptable. Notwithstanding the importance of prior knowledge on corruption extension and experience, research has made little progress in exploring why people condone it, especially in unsuspicious countries, with effective institutions and stable democratic rules and processes. The present study examines this gap in the literature by assessing the European Values Study (EVS) and the Special Eurobarometer (EB) attempts at measuring ‘Tolerance towards Corruption’ (TtC) in OECD countries in Europe during the same period (2017–2019). In the end, measurements proved to be constrained by the limited number of questions/items that try to capture TtC, which gave room to conclude that: (a) EVS and EB approaches do not measure the same TtC. The first measures it through social transgressions not exclusively related to corruption, while the second measures the willingness to accept a public-office corruption when dealing with the public sphere. (b) Lower ages combined with individual preferences/perceptions of less satisfaction with life, widespread corruption, and prior experiences with corruption proved to be more relevant to explain TtC, regardless of the country in which individuals were surveyed. (c) The type of TtC citizens display in advanced democracies proved to be mainly contingent on their age and on the way they interpret the extension of corruption and the prior contact they had with a public-office corruption in a given society. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02690-y.
Studies on perceptions of corruption have grown in recent years but are still struggling with several conceptual and measurement issues. This scoping review provides an analysis of the peer-reviewed literature on perception-based corruption. From a total of 1,374 articles surveyed, ninety ultimately met inclusion criteria. We found two main quantifiable trends when exploring our sample: publications in high-impact journals were slow in addressing perception-based corruption, and perceptions of corruption are of interest not only to political science and sociology but to other disciplinary traditions. In more qualitative terms, we observe that the explicit or implicit definitions of "corruption" behind these studies tend to fall into two categories: corruption as a "Deviant Process" or as a "Deviant Outcome," while measurements can be typified in a two-dimensional scheme: "Sociotropic" vs. "Egocentric" and "Generic" vs. "Specific." Most measurement approaches surveyed tend to use a "deviant process" definition, whereas the measurement of corruption as a "deviant outcome" still lacks development. This might represent a challenge for future research focusing on the social understanding of corruption in various contexts (administrative, organizational, political, economic, legal, etc.).
PurposeThis article presents focus groups as a method to enhance questionnaire design to frame and test items for a mass survey on corruption and austerity in democracy. Such methodology lacks systematization when it comes to the description of implementation procedures and the discussion of effective contribution to the development of survey questions on sensitive topics. The objective of this article is to contribute to the specialized literature on corruption by offering a novel focus group approach and a roadmap to guide researchers in the field when using this methodology to develop questionnaire items. This hands-on guide can be adaptable to other (survey) studies on issues prone to social desirability bias.Design/methodology/approachThis article proposes an innovative multi-technique (short questionnaire, visual stimuli and exploratory discussion with expert moderation) focus group approach to collect informal impressions about corruption and austerity. By developing a focus group design through the combination of different research techniques, the authors were able to triangulate reflexive, spontaneous and interactive qualitative bottom-up information about individual perceptions and reactions to sensitive topics. By describing how to implement these groups, other than discussing what type of qualitative information can be extracted from these discussions and to what effect, the authors seek to present a hands-on guide that can be replicated and adapted to similar studies. This roadmap will help researchers to test individual perceptions and reactions to sensitive topics through the use of tailored focus groups in order to enhance the quality of survey questionnaires prior to engaging in a high-cost fieldwork.FindingsThe article concludes that the adoption of the multi-technique focus group approach to requalify and test questions for a nationwide survey gives us a better understanding of the many ethical dilemmas individuals confront when thinking about and expressing their views on sensitive topics prone to social desirability bias. The proposed multi-technique focus group approach proved to be effective to engage participants during sessions and to obtain relevant and unanticipated information for the development of new questionnaire items and the reviewing of old ones.Research limitations/implicationsImplementing Focus Group (FG) in regions with different cultural traditions and levels of development and contrasting the perceptions, values and attitudes of two generations, with different formative backgrounds is not an easy task. In order to secure the adequate number and type of participants, the Focus Group were organized in close collaboration with four higher education institutions and two lifelong learning programs where the sessions took place. Participation was voluntary and consented, in accordance with the applicable legislation and standards for social research.Practical implicationsThe article presents an accessible and adaptable roadmap to researchers working in the field of corruption studies as well as anticorruption government agencies and CSOs interested in enhancing the quality of survey questionnaires on sensitive topics target of social desirability before engaging in a high-cost fieldwork and to describe relevant information that can be extracted from the discussions held.Social implicationsMost cross-country surveys on corruption tend to use basic/traditional measures to assess the phenomenon, such as questions on extension, acceptability and/or experience. They take almost for granted that people have the same understanding of this complex construct, which may not hold true, as the focus group discussions illustrate. The three-stage focus group design aims to improve the quality of a survey design regarding people's attitudes, perceptions and experiences of corruption in democracy, by contributing to the development of new questions that tap into the relationship between social condemnation and the individual's socio-economic conditions.Originality/valueThe article provides a low-cost combination of qualitative-oriented (questionnaire development through focus groups) with a quantitative-oriented research tool (mass survey implementation) to meet mixed-method research objectives and enhance the ability to capture several “non-statistical” dimensions of complex social phenomena that are often neglected when a single-methodology approach is used.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.