Public Perception towards Public Safety, Internal and External Threats in Albania

The Western Balkans Security Barometer (WBSB) is a regional project that measures public perceptions in Albania, Kosovo and Serbia for a wide range of security, rule of law, justice, regional cooperation and peacebuilding issues, implemented by local civil society organisations in the respective countries. WBSB has an identical methodology in all three countries, and it also measured simultaneously the perceptions of the citizens of Kosovo and Serbia on the same issues. The results of the WBSB will be published in four different reports for each country. CSDG has implemented WBSB in Albania for the second year since 2021. Along with the National Security Barometer which CSDG has produced since 2019, this project has produced a wealth of data that are used by a wide range of actors from policy makers, security practitioners, academia, the media, the international doners, etc. The regional edition measures not only the perception of Albanian citizens towards their institutions and security issues, but also their perceptions on regional cooperation and specifically the relations between Albania, Kosovo, and Serbia. This first report of the WBSB 2022, focuses on public safety, internal and external threats that Albania faces as viewed from the citizens’ perspective. The report has been produced based on data collected from a survey based on multi-layered random sample of 1120 adults conducted between 23 September and 2 October 2022 through face-to-face interviews. Surveys were proportionally distributed among 61 municipalities of Albania, taking into consideration the rural/urban areas, gender, and age quotas. Based on this multilayered sampling approach an accurate geographic and demographic representation of Albania’s adult population has been achieved, while maintaining a sampling error lower than ± 2.9% for the overall sample.

The data presented in the report derive from the Western Balkans Security Barometer (WBSB) survey. WBSB is a new regional initiative launched by KCSS in 2020, implemented in cooperation with the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) in Serbia and Center for the Study of Democracy and Governance (CSDG) in Albania, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). WBSB serves as an instrument to measure public perceptions in Albania, Kosovo and Serbia on different security-related issues. The findings demonstrate how citizens percept or are informed about the issues presented in this report. As such, the views presented in this report do not necessarily represent the views of the KCSS, BCSP, CSDG or NED.