Conference Agenda

Since its inception in 2001, the European Social Survey aimed to ‘promote and practice the highest standards in cross-national research’. Its survey methodology has been widely recognised as excellent, with its firm emphasis on input harmonisation, the use of best practice, transparency, and effective central coordination. A key part of the ESS methodology has been the use of a single mode of data collection for the questionnaire, required to prevent different mode influencing survey responses in different ways, within and across the various countries taking part in the survey. The mode chosen by the founders of the ESS was face-to-face in-home interviewers, felt in 2002 to be the ‘gold standard’ as well as the only mode that could realistically be used in every participating ESS country.

In 2027 the ESS will no longer use face-to-face interviewing for its data collection instead offering web and paper self-completion questionnaires in all countries. Its 2025 round will compare the old and new modes in a split ballot design. This change, brought forward by the COVID-19 pandemic, has been driven by a number of factors, including: improved quality of self-completion data collection; declining quality of face-to-face data collection; and the near collapse of face-to-face interviewing capacity in many countries in Europe.

Fitzgerald will outline the new ESS self-completion data collection methodology, showing how the approach was developed and presenting data about the quality of the new mode compared to the face-to-face approach. The expected impact of the mode change on data quality and the survey time series will be discussed. The presentation will conclude on a positive note arguing that that the benefits of the new self-completion approach outweigh the negatives and provide a solid basis for high quality comparative ESS data collection for the future.

Following the presentation the ESS ERIC Director will host a roundtable discussion where survey methodologists and substantive cross-national scholars, discus the challenges and opportunities that this once in a generation methodological change brings to the infrastructure and its community of users.