Resources for International Comparative Analysis: The European Social Survey ESRC Research Methods...

Resources for International Comparative Analysis:

The European Social Survey

ESRC Research Methods Festival, St Catherine's College, Oxford, 02 July 2008

Caroline Roberts*,Gillian Eva*,Atle Jåstad~

*Centre for Comparative Social SurveysCity University, London

~NSD, Norway

About the ESS

Cross-national biennial time-series

Academically-driven Multiple funding sources 18,300 registered data users

Round Fieldwork year

No. of countries

1 2002 22

2 2004 26

3 2006 25

4 2008 25 (so far)

Three main aims:

1. To produce rigorous trend data about changing social values across Europe

2. To improve the reliability of quantitative cross-national measurement in Europe

3. To advance the cause of social indicators and attitudinal measures

Participating countries

Austria France Lithuania Slovenia

Belgium Germany Luxembourg Spain

Bulgaria Greece Netherlands Sweden

Cyprus Hungary Norway Switzerland

Croatia Iceland Poland Turkey

Czech Republic

Ireland Portugal UK

Denmark Israel Romania Ukraine

Estonia Italy Russia

Finland Latvia Slovakia

The QuestionnaireCore question topics:

Trust in institutionsPolitical engagement Socio-political valuesMulti-level governanceMoral & social valuesSocial exclusionNational, ethnic, religious identityWell-being, health, security

Rotating Modules Round 1

ImmigrationCitizenship, engagement and democracy

Round 2Family, work and well-beingEconomic moralityHealth and care-seeking

Round 3Timing of the life courseSubjective well-being

Round 4Experiences and expressions of ageismWelfare attitudes in Europe

Methodological Advances Organisational structure Translation Sampling Fieldwork procedures and timing Response targets and enhancements Progress monitoring Contextual and event data Methodological research Transparency Access for all

ESS ResourcesFor background information & documentation: ESS home website:

www.europeansocialsurvey.org

For ESS data: ESS Data Archive website:

http://ess.nsd.uib.no

For training in data analysis: ESS EduNet

http://essedunet.nsd.uib.no

ESS Data Archive

Free & immediate access; quick registration Data & documentation organised by round

Survey documentation: including information about sampling, weighting and population statistics

Fieldwork documents: questionnaires; showcards, etc. Fieldwork summary: response rates, fieldwork dates, sample

size, and national deviations Data download: integrated & country files Contextual data & indices: including macro & event data

Cumulative data file now available for rounds 1-3 Online-browsing & analysis using ‘Nesstar Webview’ ESS Bibliography ESS ‘EduNet’

Other resources: NESSTAR

NESSTAR Online browsing and analysis

For use with the full ESS datasets or the specially prepared ESS EduNet data

Options:1. Description: of study, datafile, variables, etc.2. Table: create frequency tables and crosstabs3. Analysis: perform regression analysis

http://nesstar.essedunet.nsd.uib.no/webview/ http://ess.nsd.uib.no/webview/

NESSTAR: example table

Other resources: ESS Bibliography

ESS Bibliography Provides information about publications based on

the European Social Survey

Can search by author, keyword, year, country, publication type…

Authors submit information about their own publication

ESS Bibliography: search page

Other resources: ESS EduNet Internet-based analysis training programme aimed at

facilitating and enriching access to empirical data in the social sciences

The resource is developed for use in higher education

A hands on introduction to social science data analysis

Combining theory, data and methodology

Connect text (written by distinguished researchers) with data (high quality ESS data)

http://essedunet.nsd.uib.no/

Social and Political Trust (using ESS round 1 data): Ken Newton 2 theories of the origin of social trust, outlines the relationship between political and social trust

Human Values (using ESS round 1 data): Shalom Schwartz Schwartz’s theory on human values, shows how values can be used as both dependent and independent variables

Regression (using ESS round 2 data): Odd Gåsdal ‘Hands on’ introduction to analysing cross-sectional survey data using linear regression methods

Family, Gender and Work (using ESS round 2 data): Noah Lewin-Epstein and Haya Stier Different ways in which survey data are used in comparative research, uses these to examine the family-work connection

Topics

http://essedunet.nsd.uib.no/

Topics: chapter navigation

Each topic is divided into several chapters

Each chapter is again divided into several short pages

Each chapter contains exercises of varying degrees of difficulty

Chapters take around 1 hour to complete

Statistical Data Extracts from the ESS rounds 1 and 2 and a

data set with country level information Available for online analysis in Nesstar

WebView (with correlation) Or to download in different formats

Methodological glossary Short description of some key concepts.

Each concept is followed by a link to Wikipedia and an online statistical textbook

Data

Other resources About

• Short description of the ESS project and ESS EduNet

User guide

• Help pages on technical requirements, NSDstat, weighting, etc.

• An introduction on how to analyse data online - a useful starting point for those with no experience in statistical analysis

Advantages of ESS EduNet

Closeness to data

Research practice

Easy to use

Any Questions?

Thank you!

ess@city.ac.uk