Research and evaluation
What the Balkan Barometer can and cannot rank
The Balkan Barometer is the Western Balkans' flagship public-opinion survey: annual since 2015, about 1,000 interviews in each of six economies. We audited its 2023 to 2025 editions as a measuring instrument, from the Regional Cooperation Council's own released microdata.
2023 / 2024 / 2025
What it can rank
The published figures reproduce from the microdata (440 of 444 cells within one point). Economy differences of about six points or more are real, and the broad contrasts that make up most of the headlines survive. On the institutional battery, five of the seven items work the same way in every economy, so comparisons on them can be read as printed.
What it cannot
- Adjacent positions: fewer than half of the neighbouring ranks on the headline items can be told apart, and a full six-way ordering is supported on one item in thirty.
- The regional figure as regional opinion: the WB6 percentage is an unweighted mean of six economies whose populations differ tenfold; under population weights it moves by six to eleven points on the most-quoted items.
- Year-on-year change on changed questions: four of twenty-four headline series carry comparable wording, scale and base across the three editions, and between 2024 and 2025 the changed series moved twice as much as the stable ones.
- Two items in one economy each: confidence in the police in Kosovo* and in the courts in North Macedonia sit at a level the other items do not predict, and Kosovo*'s clear first place on the raw scores disappears once they are set aside.
Four things a technical report would need
- A precision statement: confidence intervals at the economy sample size and the design effect.
- A statement of what the regional figure estimates, with the population-weighted figure beside it.
- A change log for the questionnaire, edition by edition.
- A documented microdata file: sampling point, interviewer, language of interview, weights, codebook and terms of use.
This is the regional flagship example of the Measurement Quality Audit: the same procedure, on an instrument your organisation already runs, with a signed report. Measurement Quality Audit
Milos Kankaras, 2026. Independent working paper in a series that audits published rankings as measuring instruments; not a peer-reviewed article and not an RCC publication. Kosovo*: this designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.
Research and evaluation