The European Social Survey and the ESFRI process

1
The European Social Survey and the ESFRI
process

• Roger Jowell
• Centre for Comparative Social Surveys
• City University London
• Foundation Conference, International Data Forum
• Beijing 4 - 7 June 2007

2
What is the ESS?

• An unusually rigorous cross-national time series
• Accessible and widely used
• Contributes both to scholarship and governance
• Large training component and potential
• Many substantive and methodological innovations
• Started in 2001, secure until at least 2010

3
Three main aims

• To measure and explain long-term social change
  (attitudinal and behavioural) within and between
  European nations
• To achieve and promote new standards of rigour in
  cross-national social measurement
• To develop robust social indicators of national
  progress, to stand alongside existing economic
  indicators

4
The 32 ESS Countries to date
5
Question clusters - some core,some rotating

• Trust in institutions
• Citizen engagement
• Socio-political values
• Immigration
• Moral social values
• Quality of life
• Crime and security
• Value orientations

• National, ethnic, religious ID
• Health and welfare issues
• Life course perceptions
• Ageism
• Education and occupation
• Financial circumstances
• Household circumstances
• Demographic composition

6
Impact

• Data and documentation available immediately on
  web
• Already over 13,000 registered users of first two
  rounds
• ESS questions or modules embraced by US,
  Australian and South African surveys
• 8 books so far, plus hundreds of articles
  papers
• Discernible influence on comparative research
  methods and teaching
• Winner of Descartes Prize 2005

7
Funding so far

• Initiated and seed-funded by European Science
  Foundation
• Then core-funded for four biennial rounds (so
  far) by European Commission
• National costs of each round met by national
  academic funding councils
• But up to now, a time series with no time
  horizon, relying on 34 separate funding decisions
  each round

8
Longer term funding prospects

• EU decision to create new research
  infrastructures with secure long-term funding
• Multinational committee (ESFRI) set up to
  identify appropriate candidates - from both
  natural and social sciences
• 35 candidate projects identified from all over
  Europe of which four from the social sciences
  (one of which is the ESS)
• Selection now taking place from among these 35
  projects to be completed later this year final
  stage of selection later
• So ESS MIGHT be among the new EU infrastructures,
  thus securing its future as a time series