Project

Discipline

Social change; General social survey; Well-being; Democracy; Cross-national comparisons

Lead
Lay summary
The European Social Survey (ESS) is a biennial, cross-sectional survey that started for the first time in 2002. The 6th Round (R6) will take place in 2012. It is carried out simultaneously in most of the European countries. Swiss data are available for each round (at http://fors-nesstar.unil.ch and http://ess.nsd.uib.no). The aim is to provide valuable data about the evolution of values, attitudes, and behaviours of the general populations in the different countries, for reliable comparisons across countries and accross time. The questionnaire is structured in two parts. A first part, the so called ‘core module’, is conducted in every round and aims to monitor change and continuity for a wide range of socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-psychological variables on topics such as: media use; trust in social environment; political participation and perception of institutions; subjective well-being; feelings about discrimination; attitudes toward exclusion; as well as national, ethnic, and religious identity. The core module also gathers information regarding the respondent’s socio-demographic profile. The second part includes two or more modules on specific themes, repeated periodically. The purpose of these rotating modules is to provide an in-depth focus on a series of particular academic or policy concerns. In the 2012 edition, the specific themes will be ‘personal and social well-being’ on the one hand, already asked in 2006, and ‘understandings and evaluations of democracy’ on the other, a new module led by prof. Hanspeter Kriesi, a top-rated Swiss scholar. Additionally, at the end of the interview, a set of questions measure the Schwartz’ human values scale and test a few wording and scale variations for methodological research. The methodological specifications of this survey are very precise and ambitious, in order to guarantee internationally comparable data of very high quality over time. In practice, a minimum of 1,500 people, randomly selected out of the resident population aged 15+, answer a 1-hour face-to-face interview in each country. In Switzerland, the sample is drawn from the register database by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. A response rate of 55% is expected and the fieldwork is carried out with CAPI by an experienced survey agency.

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 21.02.2013

Active participation

Number	Title	Start	Funding scheme

The European Social Survey (ESS) is a biennial survey that started for the first time in 2002. The 6th Round (R6) will take place in 2012. It is carried out simultaneously in most of the European countries. The aim is to provide valuable data about the evolution of values, attitudes, and behaviours of the populations in the different countries. The methodological specifications of this survey are very precise and ambitious, in order to guarantee internationally comparable data of very high quality over time. In practice, a minimum of 1,500 people answer a 1-hour face-to-face interview in each country. The questionnaire is structured in two parts. A first part, the so called ‘core module’, is conducted in every round and aims to monitor change and continuity for a wide range of socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-psychological variables on topics such as: media use; trust in social environment; political participation and perception of institutions; subjective well-being; feelings about discrimination; attitudes toward exclusion; as well as national, ethnic, and religious identity. The core module also gathers information regarding the respondent’s socio-demographic profile. The second part includes two or more modules on specific themes, repeated periodically. The purpose of these rotating modules is to provide an in-depth focus on a series of particular academic or policy concerns. In the 2012 edition, the specific themes will be ‘personal and social well-being’ on the one hand, already asked in 2006, and ‘understandings and evaluations of democracy’ on the other, a new module led by prof. Hanspeter Kriesi, a top-rated Swiss scholar. Additionally, at the end of the interview, a set of questions measure the Schwartz’ human values scale and test a few wording and scale variations for methodological research. The present application aims to ensure continued Swiss participation in this outstanding international project. The grant contributes to producing a continuous series of valuable data for comparisons over time and countries, since Switzerland, which is also a member of the ESS Scientific Advisory Board, has participated since the very beginning and without exception in this project. The demanding methodological specifications and the exceptional collaboration of experts within the ESS have consistently provided data of very high quality to researchers, policy makers, and other interested people. The project's scientific quality and rigor yielded it the highly esteemed scientific Descartes prize in 2005.