Analysverktyg
The SOM Institute's analysis tool lets anyone explore how Swedish opinions, habits and trust have changed across decades of survey data.
About
- Client
- The SOM Institute
- Solution
- Data explorer
- Sector
- Academia and research
The challenge
The SOM Institute's national surveys hold decades of data on Swedish opinions, habits and trust. But working with the data used to mean ordering it and analyzing it in statistical software, which put it out of reach for most people.
Value delivered
Analysverktyg lets anyone explore the national SOM survey data directly in the browser. More than 600 questions, measured over time from 1986 to 2024, can be shown as line charts, bar charts or tables and broken down by background factors.
Background
Since 1986, the SOM Institute at the University of Gothenburg has surveyed Swedes about society, opinion and media. Hundreds of thousands of people have answered its questionnaires over the years.
In 2023, the SOM Institute procured Datastory to build two platforms. The first, Publikationssök, made SOM's publications searchable. The second, Analysverktyg, opens up the survey data itself and was launched in December 2025.
Solution
Datastory built Analysverktyg as a tool that works straight in the browser: pick a question from one of the themes and its results appear as a chart, with no orders or software needed.
Users can switch between line chart, bar chart and table, filter on background factors, and edit the response alternatives to hide or combine answers, so patterns are easier to see. The data is updated every autumn.
Questions grouped into themes
More than 600 questions are organized into themes, such as trust in institutions, the economy, and energy and climate. A search field finds any question by keyword.
Line, bar or table
The same question can be shown as a line chart to follow trends over time, a bar chart to compare the answers in a single year, or a table with exact percentages and the number of respondents.
Break results down by group
Results can be split by background factors, such as demographics, education and household circumstances, to see how different groups answer the same question.
Technology
Modeling the data in Data Manager
The SOM Institute's data was already well structured, but it had to be translated from the institute's own system into the format of Datastory's Data Manager. That took a good deal of data modeling.
In the data as delivered, every variable was simply a question. Datastory separated the background questions, on things like demographics, education and household circumstances, from the questions about opinions and values, since the tool presents them differently: one kind is charted, the other is used to break the results down. It also identified which response alternatives are valid for each question.
Decades of survey data in the browser
Answers from the national SOM surveys since 1986 are structured so any question can be charted instantly, without downloading data or installing software.
Flexible response alternatives
Users can hide or combine response alternatives, for example merging the two levels of high trust into one line, to make long-term patterns clearer.
Results
“This new platform is a powerful tool for following how public opinion develops over time, as an overview or within subgroups. It draws on the answers of hundreds of thousands of Swedes between 1986 and 2024 and covers more than 600 survey questions that have been measured over time. All presented in an easy-to-navigate, user-friendly interface.”
Daniel JanssonResearch Communicator, SOM InstituteAnalysverktyg makes decades of Swedish survey data available to anyone with a browser. Journalists, students, decision-makers and curious citizens can explore how Swedish attitudes have changed without ordering data or knowing statistical software.
Together with Publikationssök, it gives something back to the hundreds of thousands of Swedes who have answered SOM's surveys: both the research built on their answers and the answers themselves are now open to explore.
In March 2026, Statistikfrämjandet, a Swedish association that promotes statistics, named the SOM Institute Statistics Promoter of the Year 2025. The award recognizes its work analyzing Swedish society since 1986, and the citation singles out Analysverktyg as a powerful contribution to the role of statistics in Swedish society.
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