40dB. A commitment to innovation in research work

At 40dB, sociologists, psychologists, methodologists, statisticians, economists, data scientists and mathematicians work with a single goal: to listen to people.

This month, the Ideas for Democracy team interviewed Belén Barreiro, thinker, author of the book "La Sociedad que Seremos"-Planeta 2017- personality repeatedly included in the list of Top 100 Spanish women leaders, expert in understanding the complex societies of the 21st century. Former president of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), today she is founder and CEO of 40dB.

At 40dB. what we seek, above all, is to understand people. We want to understand how they think, how they feel, how they live, how people relate to each other. In short, what we want is to get to know people in an integral way, in a complete way, understanding all aspects of their lives.

There is definitely less lying in an online survey. It has advantages. The interviewee expresses him or herself naturally in front of a screen. It is easier to tell the truth in front of a screen than in front of a person, strangely enough. Online surveys have other advantages. They are surveys that allow the use of audiovisual support, we can use photographs, audio and video. The interviewee often answers from home, with all the peace and quiet in the world, in a context in which he or she feels at ease.

Yes, absolutely, but it must also be said that you have to know how to ask questions. You have to know when to ask about new issues; that is, know when to introduce certain questions that did not make sense 10 years ago and now do, and you have to be open to dealing with data that is not only quantitative, here we do not only work with survey data; there are qualitative data that are fundamental for getting to know people, online communities, ethnographies, focus groups..... And there is also data from the internet, data from social networks that we also use and that are fundamental to get closer to this comprehensive knowledge of people.

Indeed, in order to believe a survey, it is necessary to know completely how the survey was carried out, what the raw data are, what the direct voting intention is, what the voting memory is, what the sympathy for the parties is. I believe that this information is essential in order to be able to evaluate an estimate of the vote, otherwise the estimate is worthless. In reality, we are not discovering a transparency that is nothing new, the scientific method has always been based on allowing other people to reproduce your steps, that is what allows transparency.

I think so, because polarisation, after all, is "trench politics" where everyone is locked in their own world with their own codes and, undoubtedly, this type of politics also encourages the use of lies as an electoral and political weapon.

We have been doing multi-country studies for quite some time, not only in Europe but also in Latin America, in fact this year we have done a study on Colombian society, an interesting radiography and right now we are making all the arrangements to open a branch of 40dB. in Bogota (Colombia).

What the empirical evidence shows is precisely the opposite. Societies with a high level of satisfaction in all aspects of their lives... at work, with democracy itself, are internally more cohesive societies, which are more committed to equality policies, and also externally, countries with very satisfied societies are the countries that engage in the most international cooperation. Curiously, the relationship is the inverse.

.... We end this interview with Belén Barreiro, thanking her for a little light and confidence in the "society that we can become", and wishing her success in her efforts to learn about and transparently disseminate information on the societies of the 21st century.