Guest Editors:
Wiebke Weber, Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Tim Hanson, European Social Survey ERIC, United Kingdom
Eldad Davidov, University of Cologne, Germany, and University of Zurich and URPP “Social Networks”, Switzerland
The European Social Survey
The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted across Europe biennially since 2002/03. It provides academics, researchers, and policy makers with high-quality cross-national data to map and measure social attitudes, beliefs and behaviours between and across European nations. 38 countries have taken part in at least one round of the survey, and 15 countries have participated in all nine rounds. Respondents are selected by strict random probability methods using sampling frames of individuals, households, or addresses. They represent the entire residential population aged 15 and over in each country.
Since the completion of Round 9 of the survey in 2018/19, over 430,000 face-to-face interviews have taken place. In each round, over 200 questions have been carefully translated into each language – with the majority of survey items being repeated every round, providing detailed longitudinal data. The ESS also includes two topics in each round (so called “rotating” or “repeat” modules) proposed by researchers from all scientific disciplines and selected by a committee in an open competition. Everyone can access the data online.
Call for papers
During its almost 20 years of data collection, the ESS has maintained the highest methodological standards in cross-national data collection. A key aim of the ESS has always been to implement high quality standards in its methodology and to improve standards in the field of cross-national surveys more generally. Measuring attitudes cross-nationally faces challenges that go beyond those of surveys conducted in a single country or using a single language. To face these challenges, the ESS includes measurement instruments that are harmonized across countries by design while accounting for specificities of the participating countries.
To evaluate the quality of these measures and the comparability across national versions this call for papers seeks contributions to address:
- the development of new measures in the ESS
- adaptations of measures for the cross-national ESS
- the national adaptations of ESS measures
- evaluating psychometric/measurement quality of ESS measures or their measurement equivalence, or
- general advances in methodology, exemplified with ESS data
Submission may be both original academic articles as well as shorter research notes.
Submission instructions
Submission will take place in two stages:
- In the first stage, we request interested authors to submit an extended abstract (up to 300 words) that describes the study.
- In the second stage, we will select the abstracts that best fit to the call and invite their authors to submit a full paper or research note for double-blind peer review.
The complete manuscript should be submitted through the journal submission system. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have carefully read the submission guidelines for Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences (MISS).