Standard Dataset
The QoG Standard dataset is our largest dataset. It consists of approximately 2100 variables from more than 100 data sources related to Quality of Government.
Citation
When using QoG Standard Data, make sure to cite both the original source and our publication:
Teorell, Jan, Aksel Sundström, Sören Holmberg, Bo Rothstein, Natalia Alvarado Pachon, Cem Mert Dalli, Rafael Lopez Valverde & Paula Nilsson. 2024. The Quality of Government Standard Dataset, version Jan24. University of Gothenburg: The Quality of Government Institute, https://www.gu.se/en/quality-government doi:10.18157/qogstdjan24
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 Standard 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 Standard 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 eighteen thematic topics. Detailed descriptions of all variables are sorted by original data sources. We hope that this will facilitate your search for variables.
In 2009, the QoG Standard Dataset received the Lijphart, Przeworski, Verba Award for Best Dataset by the APSA Comparative Politics Section.
Do you want your dataset being included in QoG Compilations?
The QoG Standard, Basic, and OECD datasets have been made possible thanks to researchers and institutions, who kindly share their data with us to disseminate it to a larger audience. Our compilation datasets and visualization tools are and will be always open-source, and it has been used by thousands of researchers and students across the world and disciplines.
If you have any dataset that is relevant to the quality of government, please contact us about incorporating it into our compilations.
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.
If you have problem with opening the QoG Standard datasets in Stata:
The Stata/IC has limitation in 2 047 variables. The QoG Standard datasets are bigger and therefore users of the Stata/IC cannot use these datasets in its original form. If you have access to Stata/IC, you can only open the variables in the QoG Standard dataset that you need for studies.
First, download the file in .dta format to your computer. Then, open Stata/IC in the command window to run the command:
use list of variables using "C:\linktofile\qog_std_cs_jan21"
list of variables can be any of the following:
• list of all variable names needed
• all variables of one or several data sources, you should indicate the prefix of the data source (e.g., bl_*, ciri_*)
• interval between variables (e.g., aid_cpnc – vi_ext)
Note: All lists of prefixes and variable names are presented in the codebook. We recommend you to always add and open the identification variables: cname, ccode and year (for time-series).
