All time references are in CEST
Using Panel Surveys to Study Values and Beliefs in Times of Crisis |
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| Session Organisers | Professor Kazimierz Slomczynski (IFiS PAN, CONSIRT and OSU) Professor Irina Tomescu-Dubrow (IFiS PAN and CONSIRT) |
| Time | Tuesday 18 July, 14:00 - 15:30 |
| Room | U6-02 |
Evidence from cross-sectional surveys suggests that, in times of crisis, values and beliefs change, on an aggregate level, substantially. Some values and beliefs, such as family-oriented, polarize people but some, such as national security, unify people. Yet, to understand to what extent such and similar changes result from within-person or inter-person differences calls for panel survey data. Panel data are ideally suited for analyzing how differences in experiencing crisis situations – such as pandemics, rapid inflation, political turmoil, and various types of natural disasters – matter for stability and change in peoples’ values and beliefs. Are such changes enduring, once the crisis ends? If so, for whom, and under what conditions?
For this session, we invite both methodological and substantive papers. Methodologically oriented papers could focus on the intricacies of statistical modeling of change in values and beliefs. Is structural equation modeling an appropriate tool, or should we go beyond it and look at truly dynamic models? Methodological innovations in studying changes in values and beliefs are welcome. We also seek substantive papers that use panel data to examine how crises impact specific values and beliefs and for whom, whether some values and beliefs contribute to the polarization of social groups, or they bring groups together, etc. Cross-national insights - based on data from a common project or from projects conducted independently in different countries – are especially welcome.
Keywords: Panel surveys, stability & change in values and beliefs, statistical modeling of change
Professor Henning Best (RPTU Kaiserslautern) - Presenting Author
Professor Jochen Mayerl (TU Chemnitz)
The New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale, originally proposed by Dunlap et al. (2000), has been used in environmental sociology for decades and is by far the most frequently used measure of generalized environmental concern. NEP covers a wide range of environmental attitudes, including a coherent ecological belief system and ecological values (Xiao et al. 2019). Yet, questions of measurement invariance – cross-culturally as well as over time – have been raised and are yet to be studied. In this paper we use data from the German Gesis-Panel and estimate longitudinal Confirmatory Factor Analyses as well as Latent Growth Curve Models to assess measurement invariance over time. Preliminary results indicate that metric invariance can be established, but some items need to be excluded to achieve satisfactory fit (cross-sectional as well as over time).
Mr Matthieu Olivier (CDSP - SciencesPo) - Presenting Author
Professor Ettore Recchi (CRIS - SciencesPo)
Dr Marta Veljkovic (CRIS - SciencesPo)
Dr Andrew Zola (CRIS - SciencesPo)
ELIPSS is an ongoing French probability-based panel established in 2012. This online survey instrument has made it possible to collect a large amount of longitudinal data on material (socio-economic status, income and wealth) and socio-psychological conditions (subjective well-being, depression levels, family tensions), as well as underlying societal factors (resilience, social cohesion, social capital, degree of trust). This has allowed a wide range of social science researchers to monitor evolutions in French society over the past decade.
Starting in March 2020, ELIPSS set up a survey protocol called Coping with Covid-19 (CoCo) to follow respondents’ daily lives and to assess the changes that individuals underwent over the onset of the pandemic and lockdown restrictions. The CoCo project has leveraged the panel by running eight ad hoc survey waves during the direst crisis moments of the first pandemic year, followed by two more administered in October and November 2022 to begin evaluating the long-term impact of the pandemic.
With the ELIPSS panel, it is thus possible to analyze the behaviors and attitudes of the French resident population in times of crisis, and to situate the social effects of the pandemic in pre- and post-pandemic living conditions.
Ms Soyeon Jin (Technical University of Munich) - Presenting Author
Public issue salience—i.e., perception that an immigration is the most important problem or concern about immigration—has been often used as a proxy of anti-immigrant attitudes based on the assumption that perceived importance or concern lead to the heightened threat perception. The measure has been popular for the study of media’s effects on immigration attitudes. However, findings have not been consistent. Some studies observed that media salience increases hostility towards immigrants, while other studies found no effect or even positive influence of media salience. In order to understand these inconsistent findings, this study asserts the need to revisit the assumption: The measure of anti-immigrant attitudes. This study argues that employing anti-immigrant attitudes and public issue salience interchangeably has created such inconsistent findings and they should be separated. Moreover, given their differences, media salience’s influence is limited to public issues salience. In order to investigate this assumption, longitudinal survey data at an individual level are employed, being matched with media article data from several legacy outlets. To study country differences and time differences, two different countries and two different survey fieldwork times are chosen. The British Election Study around the time of Brexit for the UK and GESIS Panel at the year of 2019 for Germany are employed. Correlation tests and random intercept cross-lagged panel analysis reveal that public issue salience and anti-immigrant attitudes are reciprocally and positively affect each other in the UK. On the other hand, in Germany, their relationships are very weak and even negative. Furthermore, in the UK, media salience has positive and significant influence for both, but in Germany, only public issue salience is affected by media salience. The results suggest a more elaborate measure of anti-immigrant attitudes considering country and time differences.
Professor Victor Perez-Hernandez (Universidad Iberoamericana) - Presenting Author
Dr Graciela Teruel (Universidad Iberoamericana)
We present the challenges and results of an experimental longitudinal mobile phone survey to assess social changes during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of a developing country: Mexico’s ENCOVID-19 Longitudinal. Using survey details obtained from a series of monthly cross-sectional mobile phone surveys collected with random digital dialling, we follow 1,468 households in 2020, 2021 and 2022 (a retention rate of 58% from 2020 to 2021, and 63% from 2021 to 2022). We provide a series of reflections on the difficulties faced to implement a longitudinal study in developing countries, as well as on the opportunities that such an instrument may provide. Despite the important obstacles to execute longitudinal studies in developing countries, we found that mobile phone surveys provide a cost-effective solution that has been sub-utilised and may provide alternative solutions to several research settings. The short life of many numbers (approximately 5% of all users change their number every month) suggest that keeping attrition rates low may require either a limited span between rounds, collect data on relatives (which most respondents may be unwilling to provide), or may need refreshment samples to ensure external validity. An experiment performed to improve retention showed that incentives (in the form of credit in their phone bill) may be of limited aid, so that there are considerable areas of opportunity in this area. However, the results obtained are promising, letting us to explore the dynamics of income, labour market status, food security and mental health during the pandemic, all of which provide useful tools for social policy and other areas of research.