Month: May 2019

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The Survey is ON!

The invitation letters to our 10.000 prospective participants were mailed on Monday 20 May and we can see that some addressees in Europe have already received them, as the first few responses have been saved in the survey database. To those participants – heartfelt thanks for your swift responses!

When the invitation reaches you, please do take the time to open the survey and fill in your responses. It is only this way that we can secure high quality research. On the basis of previous projects, we can estimate that even up to 3.000 of our letters will never reach their addressee but bounce back due to outdated address information. So those who actually do receive the invitation are valuable as gold to the project, and we appreciate every single contribution.

If you have not received our letter as yet, no need to despair. It will take a few more weeks until the mail services all around the world have distributed each and every invitation. If you have not received the letter and would like to participate in the survey, please contact us at
votingabroad [at] helsinki.fi. Thank you in advance.

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Ready to go!

Our sample from the National Population Register (Väestörekisterikeskus) has arrived at the university. In ten days’ time or so, the survey invitation letters will be mailed to the 10.000 potential participants all over the world. Apart from the 17 countries where most of our survey invitees live, the world wide randomized selection came to include approximately 70 other countries where one or more Finnish citizens are going to receive an invitation letter from us.

We know from previous research projects that, unfortunately, approximately 30 % of the letters will never reach their addressee due outdated address details. This is due to the fact that the Finnish Population Register  depends on the citizens’ own notices of moving.

If you receive the letter, please do fill in the survey. Maintaining the high level of social scientific research in Finland is not possible without citizens who are willing to share their views and to dedicate their time for the benefit of academic research. Thank you in advance!