Bridging ESS and EVS to study social attitudes, norms and values across Europe |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Ruxandra Comanaru (European Social Survey ERIC, City, University of London) |
| Coordinator 2 | Professor Vera Lomazzi (European Values Study/ University of Bergamo) |
| Coordinator 3 | Professor Rory Fitzgerald (European Social Survey ERIC, City, University of London) |
| Coordinator 4 | Professor Ruud Luijkx (European Values Study/Tilburg University) |
Cross-sectional and cross-national surveys in Europe, such as the European Social Survey (ESS) and the European Values Study (EVS), support scholars aiming at studying human values and attitudes comparatively, both across countries and over time, by providing high quality data concerning several life domains. The ESS collects data through a core questionnaire and 2 rotating modules every 2 years since 2002 in a varying number of countries (the maximum was 32 participating countries in ESS Round 10 – 2020-22), while the EVS investigates the Europeans’ values since 1981 in more than 40 countries every 9 years (the maximum was 47 participating countries in 2008).
While keeping their different goals and identities, these two research programmes provide measures to investigate common dimensions in the domains of social and institutional trust; political participation; life satisfaction and happiness; national identity; religiosity; attitudes towards immigration, gender roles, climate change, welfare, and others. Scholars often exploit this commonality to enlarge the coverage of their studies, for example combining the datasets to obtain a longer time-series or a larger number of cases or countries. Others, interested in specific topics, for example attitudes to climate change, can benefit from the complementarity of the two surveys.
The session invites papers that adopt the combined use of ESS and EVS in the comparative study of values and attitudes, studies investigating the potential bridging of EVS measures and ESS items from methodological perspective, including the bridging of the demographic variables included in these surveys.