Image 3: Proportional distribution of the surveys required by nationalities

Source: compiled by the authors based on INE data

Since respondents had to meet a number of requirements regarding the duration of their residence on the Costa del Sol and there are always surveys that have to be discarded because they do not meet the requirements or are incomplete, a significantly higher number of questionnaires were distributed and collected. It was thus possible to maintain a good balance between the different complementary variables such as male-female, age, or duration and place of residence.

The questionnaire initially drafted in Spanish and agreed upon for the general project was translated by professional translators into the corresponding language of the other nationalities under study. The translators were briefed before-hand on the meaning and purpose of each question to ensure that their translations were as accurate as possible. Before starting to distribute the questionnaires, a pretest was carried out with the online versions in English and German, from 30 November 2017 to 25 December 2017, to allow any possible errors to be corrected.

The questionnaire in German therefore contained, as in the other languages, the same 41 questions of three types, name-ly, closed, semi-open and open, grouped into five thematic blocks: moving to Spain (6 questions); social relations (5 ques-tions); integration (11 questions); media from their home country (3 questions) and media produced on the Costa del Sol (16). The questionnaires were distributed both in print form and online between November 2017 and March 2018.

Lastly, Phase 5 consists of a focus group that made it possible to go deeper into those issues that the individual surveys were not able to explain, as well as to obtain new information or nuances in the discussion. The focus group was held on 9 November 2018 on the premises of the Faculty of Communication Sciences in Málaga with 7 participants (4 men and 3 women), a moderator, an observer and an interpreter. The official part of the session, which was video recorded, lasted an hour and a half. At the beginning of each thematic block, the moderator invited the participants to intervene successively and then they were allowed to engage in a free discussion, which was only interrupted to allow the interpreter time to