Basic Dataset
The QoG Basic dataset is a smaller version of the QoG Standard dataset. It consists of approximately 400 variables from 80 different data sources related to the Quality of Government.
Citation
When using QoG Basic data, make sure to cite both the original source and our publication:
Dahlberg, Stefan, Aksel Sundström, Sören Holmberg, Bo Rothstein, Natalia Alvarado Pachon, Cem Mert Dalli, Rafael Lopez Valverde & Paula Nilsson. 2024. The Quality of Government Basic Dataset, version Jan24. University of Gothenburg: The Quality of Government Institute, https://www.gu.se/en/quality-government doi:10.18157/qogbasjan24
The QoG datasets are open and available, free of charge and without a need to register your data. You can use them for your analysis, graphs, teaching, and other academic-related and non-commercial purposes. We ask our users to cite always the original source(s) of the data and our datasets.
We do not allow other uses of these data including but not limited to redistribution, commercialization and other for-profit usage. If a user is interested in such use or has doubts about the license, they will have to refer to the original source and check with them if this is allowed and what requirements they need to fulfill.
Be mindful that the original data sources are the only owners of their data and they can adjust their license without previous warning.
In the QoG Basic CS dataset, data from and around 2020 is included. Data from 2020 is prioritized; however, if no data is available for a country for 2020, data for 2021 is included. If no data exists for 2021, data for 2019 is included, and so on up to a maximum of +/- 3 years.
In the QoG Basic TS dataset, data from 1946 to 2023 is included, and the unit of analysis is country-year (e.g., Sweden-1946, Sweden-1947, etc.).
In the Codebook, you can find a description of all data sources and variables. We provide a list of the variables categorized into nineteen thematic topics. Detailed descriptions of all variables are sorted by original data sources. We hope that this will facilitate your search for variables.
Attention for users
With the 2022 update, we made some changes in our identification variables to make the data-merging processes with other datasets easier. We have replaced our country name (cname) and country code (ccode) variables with the ISO-3166-1 standard country names and numeric codes. Whenever the numeric code or name does not exist in the ISO standard, we imputed the code and name used by the QoG standard, making sure it did not clash with previous codes. For example, the QoG name standard for France is France (-1962) and France (1963-). With adopting the ISO standard, the name is France for both entities.
QoG standard country names and codes, which were previously called cname and ccode, are renamed as cname_qog and ccode_qog respectively.
