ESRA 2025 Preliminary Program

Monday 14 July    Tuesday 15 July    Wednesday 16 July    Thursday 17 July    Friday 18 July   

All time references are in CEST

European Values Study and World Values Survey: Substantive Findings and Methodological Challenges in value research
Session Organisers	Dr Vera Lomazzi (European Values Study/ University of Bergamo) Dr Kseniya Kizilova (World Values Survey Association) Professor Ruud Luijkx (European Values Study/Tilburg University)
Time	Tuesday 15 July, 09:00 - 10:30
Room	Ruppert rood - 0.51

The European Values Study (EVS) and the World Values Survey (WVS) are two large-scale comparative time-series survey research programs studying people’s values, norms and beliefs. Since 1981, these programmes have jointly carried out representative national surveys in over 120 countries and societies containing 92 percent of the world’s population representing an invaluable data source for a global network of scholars and international development agencies, including the World Bank, the UNDP, the WHO, the OECD, regional development banks etc. Over the years, the EVS and the WVS have proven the importance of population value study and have demonstrated that people’s beliefs play a key role in economic development, emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, rise of gender equality, and the extent to which societies have effective government.
We welcome submissions based on EVS/WVS data addressing substantive and/or methodological aspects of value research.
The recently published joint EVS-WVS dataset (2017-2022) and the EVS-WVS trend file (1981-2022) allow social and political sciences to broaden and deepen their analysis. Present session invites papers which make use of the EVS/WVS data -solely or in combination with other types of data- to address a broad scope of issues, including political culture and political attitudes, support for democracy and political participation, perceptions of gender equality and moral values, identity and trust, civil society, corruption, solidarity, and migration among the others.
We also invite papers addressing the projects’ methodological aspects, including challenges and limitations such as reliability and equivalence of employed scales and indicators, non-responses, combining self- and interviewer-administered mode and other. The panel particularly invites papers comparing findings collected via different survey methods in the same countries allowing to estimate the reliability of online surveys as well as to discuss the challenges and

Keywords: values, WVS, EVS

Papers

THE GENDER REVOLUTION: STALLED OR STILL UNFOLDING? CHANGES IN GENDER ROLE IDEOLOGY ACROSS WESTERN AND ISLAMIC COUNTRIES, COHORTS 1942-1995

Miss saba Aslam Khan (Vrije University Amsterdam) - Presenting Author
Mrs Ineke Nagel (Vrije University Amsterdam)
Mr Harry Ganzeboom (Vrije University Amsterdam)

The gender role revolution is often conceptualized as significant transformations within the gender system. Prior literature suggests that there is an increase toward egalitarian values about gender roles but that this upward trend has stalled among recent generations. This claim is based upon limited evidence from developed Western societies. It is questionable whether this claim can be upheld globally. The literature suggests that in Islamic countries, including the ones that are developed, the trend towards egalitarian gender values is less steep. The aim of this paper is to trace whether the developments in gender role ideology are happening similarly across Western and Islamic societies. Particularly, we are interested to know to what extent the developments have levelled off in both types of countries and, if so, from which generations or period the trend reversal or platueauing has occurred. We also examine the effects of various cultural and structural predictors highlighted in two important studies by Gerling et al. (2019) and Cotter et al. (2011), including changes in religiosity and education, to understand the possible stall and uneven pace of change in gender role ideologies. Our analysis is based on repeated cross-sectional data sets of WVS and EVS [IVS] over the period of the past two decades (2005-2022, five waves). We find a number of variations across western and Islamic countries. The findings show that on average, an upward linear trend over cohorts is found in both Islamic and western societies, which starts leveling off in most recent cohorts. However, the developments in trends towards egalitarian gender ideology are leveling off much steeper in Islamic societies. The cohort effect on gender role ideologies is strongly mediated by religiosity and education, but the effect of religiosity is much stronger in Islamic societies.

Is there a Southern European variant of secular transition model? Evidence from a harmonized dataset about religious change in Europe (1973-2023)

Mr Ferruccio Biolcati Rinaldi (University of Milan) - Presenting Author
Mr David Consolazio (University of Milan)
Mr Riccardo Ladini (University of Milan)
Mr Francesco Molteni (University of Milan)
Mr Cristiano Vezzoni (University of Milan)

The theory of secular transition proposed by David Voas constitutes a research agenda open to various developments. One of the most debated issues concerns the universality of the secular transition model, specifically whether the transition process is the same in all countries experiencing secularization dynamics, or whether there may be potential variants of a prevailing model. This possibility has been explored particularly in Eastern European countries, given the unique interplay between politics and religion in these nations from World War II to the present day.
Preliminary analyses also focus attention on Southern European countries, which could represent a specific variant of the secular transition model. In Italy, as well as in Portugal and Spain, the transition process appears to be slower compared to what has been observed in other European and Western countries. This hypothesis is being thoroughly tested. If confirmed, the possible explanatory factors for this variant will be investigated, ranging from the religious specificities of the national context to the social structures and networks that may influence the spread of secularity as an innovation.
The analyses are based on the CARPE dataset (Church Attendance and Religious change Pooled European dataset), which harmonizes variables related to religious affiliation and participation in religious services from major international longitudinal and comparative surveys (ESS, EVS, WVS, as well as Eurobarometer and ISSP). Currently, the CARPE dataset contains data for 45 countries, covering the period 1970–2016, and derives from 1,665 national surveys. This translates into a sample of approximately 1.8 million individual observations. For these analyses, the dataset will be updated to include surveys from recent years.

Postmaterialism and Perceived Essentials of Democracy: Comparing mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan

Professor Ming-Chang Tsai (Academia Sinica) - Presenting Author

This study examines the relationship between postmaterialist values and preferences for democratic principles, focusing on Chinese societies where democracy has been traditionally understood differently than in Western contexts. The core argument is that postmaterialist values, characterized by an emphasis on freedom and self-expression, shape policy priorities within democratic frameworks. It is hypothesized that individuals with higher postmaterialist scores will view free elections as a legitimate basis for political power, while placing less importance on other democratic traits such as equality or civil rights protections. Using data from Wave 7 of the World Values Survey, this study analyzes responses from four Chinese societies: mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. The findings reveal significant variations. In mainland China, postmaterialist values show limited differentiation in respondents’ prioritization of democratic principles, because it is an authoritarian regime. In Hong Kong, however, these values strongly correlate with support for free elections and civil disobedience. In Macau, postmaterialist values are most closely associated with a preference for less state intervention in addressing social inequality. Meanwhile, in Taiwan, postmaterialist values primarily align with increased support for civil disobedience. These differences underscore the complexity of postmaterialist value shifts and their varied influence on public perceptions of government priorities across the different political contexts of the four societies.

Gender Differences in the Determinants of Subjective Well-being: Does Societal Gender Equality Matter?

Dr Natalia Soboleva (University of Milan) - Presenting Author

Looking at gender differences in predictors of subjective well-being (SWB) can shed light to the role of gender equality across the world. Although there is a lot of research regarding the gender differences in SWB the research regarding the differences in determinants is scarce (Joshanloo 2018; Arrondo et al., 2020). Does growing gender equality mean that male and female happiness depends on the same factors? The objective of this research is to reveal gender differences in the determinants of SWB across the world. The emphasis is on comparing countries with different level of societal gender equality. Two competitive explanations could be distinguished. On one hand, higher societal gender equality leads to increasing gender equality in opportunities (Audette et al., 2018) and thus can contribute to the growing similarity of male and female determinants of subjective well-being. On the other hand, the gender equality-personality paradox perspective claims that more gender-equal countries offer their citizens more freedom to express gender-specific preferences (Falk, Hermle, 2018) and this can result in growing distinction between determinants of SWB. The joint WVS-EVS 2017-2022 data is used as a dataset. Multilevel regression analysis is the main research method. The results confirm the hypothesis that gender differences in determinants of SWB vary across countries depending on the level of societal gender equality. Generally, women are slightly happier compared to men. Regarding the factors, characteristics of education, income and labor market participation explain more SWB of men compared to women. But these effects are not consistent across the world.

Face-to-face vs Internet panels: A Methodological Experiment

Professor Yilmaz Esmer (Bahcesehir University) - Presenting Author
Ms Duygu Karadon (Freie Universität Berlin)

Until about1990s, the golden standard in survey research was face-to-face interviews. International survey projects such as the ESS, WVS or EVS steered away from telephone interviews (and with good justification) despite their significantly lower costs.
In the last couple of decades, two developments -advances in internet technology and prohibitive costs of face-to-face interviews- seem to have changed the scene. Even the most passionate defenders (which included the authors of this abstract) started to consider, albeit out of necessity, alternatives such as web surveys, internet panels and mixed-mode methodology. Today, with over 90% coverage in even less developed societies, the internet has become an attractive alternative to face-to-face surveys. Indeed, in addition to cost, they have the advantage of being much faster and much less prone to coding and interviewer errors. A heaven on earth for the survey researcher? Not quite, because the big question now was accuracy -a question that initiated sophisticated methodological research to compare different modes of data collection. Perhaps most notably, the ESS published a number of reports on the topic.
From what has been done in a limited number of societies, we know that the reliability of sampling frames, response rates, social desirability effects, and responses to sensitive questions are impacted by web-based interviews.
To the best of our knowledge, no methodological research on these concerns exists in Turkey which has a unique place on the Inglehart-Welzel World Cultural Map. Thus, we propose to compare F2F and online panel interviews with a limited sample (similar to the extent possible for both surveys) and including only sensitive questions (e.g. income, party preference, homosexuality, religiosity) from most recent WVS/EVS questionnaires. Findings are expected to shed light on important methodological questions.