Data access & conditions
European Cooperation in Social Science Data
Dissemination
|
|
|
2. From comparative studies to continuous international data programmes
In the sixties and early seventies, there was hardly any continuos effort to systematically collect data in internationally coordinated research. Nevertheless, social research profited from a number of pioneering initiatives emphasising an European perspective.
Almond and Verba conducted their Civic Culture Study in Summer 1959 in Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Mexico and USA [3] and made their data available via the archives of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Szalai and his colleagues [4] collected TIME BUDGET data in twelve eastern and western countries between May 1965 and October 1966. The original data were deposited with the Zentralarchiv in Cologne. One of the first international comparative projects that involved archival participation right from the beginning was Political Action, a study on political participation and orientations in eight nations. This was first conducted between 1973 and 1976 and partly replicated between 1979 and 1976 [5].
While these studies reached high visibility, an early effort to monitor social behaviour and public opinion in Europe went almost unnoticed. The United States Information Agency (USIA) started its series of data collections on France, Italy, United Kingdom and West Germany already in 1952 and continued to 1976 [6]. A substantial part of this collection was prepared and documented for secondary analysis by the Zentralarchiv with support of the Beliefs in Government Project (BIG) of the European Science Foundation (ESF) and is now available to the scientific community via the Cologne archive [7].
In spring 1970, Jacques-René Rabier in cooperation with Ronald Inglehart fielded the first European Communities Study in Belgium, France, Italy, The Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany. These Community studies then became the starting point for the biannual EUROBAROMETERs, one of the richest sources of comparative data on European societies. Between 1987 and 1996 this survey programme was continued and enlarged under the direction of Karlheinz Reif, who, in cooperation with George Cunningham, also launched the Central and Eastern EUROBAROMETER (CEEB) in up to twenty countries to monitor economic and political changes. Now, Anna Melich is in charge of the EUROBAROMETER. The primary objective of these studies is to inform the European Commission about public attitudes towards overriding topics related to European integration, by regularly monitoring the social and political attitudes in the EU. The first EUROBAROMETER was fielded in April and May 1973, the second EUROBAROMETER followed in October 1973. Obviously, this ongoing data collection also was of high value to the scientific community and the Commission decided to open access via the social science data archives. Fortunately, this cooperation started soon to guarantee the long term accessibility for all EUROBAROMETERS, but the first, which got lost. ICPSR and ZA (see http://www.za.uni-koeln.de/data/en/eurobarometer/ebinfo.htm) are working together to process, document, and distribute these data via the international archival network. Earlier, the Belgian Archives for the Social Sciences (BASS) had supported this project, recently the Swedish Social Science Data Services (SSD) joined to share the workload.
To analyse changes in political and economic orientations, family values and religious norms, their impact on economic growth, political party strategies and the prospect for democratic institutions, the first comparative value surveys were started in 1981 [8]. The European Values System Study Group (EVSSG) under leadership of Jan Kerkhofs and Ruud de Moor collected data on ten West European societies2.
These surveys earned so much attention that they soon were replicated in fourteen additional countries. Gordon Heald coordinated the fieldwork outside Europe. The first series of surveys was conducted between 1981 and 1984. The second wave started in 1989 and was completed in Spring 1993, the third wave is scheduled for 1999. To facilitate cross-national research, the data for the World Values Surveys were integrated and documented by Ronald Inglehart with funding from a National Science Foundation grant. They are available via the national social science data archives.
One of the most comprehensive, continuos academic survey programmes is the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). It combines the cross-national with a longitudinal time dimension by replicating particular question modules, ideally in five year intervals (see http://www.issp.org/homepage.htm;). The first survey on "Role of Government" started 1985 in four countries (United States, Great Britain, West Germany and Australia). Since then, ISSP has grown rapidly and is now covering more than thirty countries around the world, including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Russia and Slovenia. Topics of ISSP include Social Networks (1986), Social Inequality (1987, 1992), Family and Changing Gender Roles (1988, 1994), Work Orientations (1989, 1997), Religion (1991), Environment (1993), Role of Government was replicated in 1990 and 1996. The secretariat coordinating the ISSP is carried by the most active members on a rotating basis3. Official data archive of ISSP is the Zentralarchiv, which makes the integrated data sets available via the archival network (see http://www.gesis.org/en/data_service/issp/index.htm)4.
A pioneering collection of longitudinal socio-economic data on private households was started in the United States in 1968 (PSID). Similar studies followed in Germany (SOEP, since 1984), Sweden (HUS, since 1984), Luxembourg (PSELL, since 1985) France (ESEML, since 1985), Poland (PHP, since 1987), United Kingdom (BHPS, since 1991), Belgium (PSBH), Hungary (HHP) and Spain (GES) since 1992. These panels typically start with several thousand households and persons within these households, sufficiently high numbers to survive panel mortality. The studies include variables on household composition, employment, earnings, occupational biographies, health and satisfaction indicators. The panel projects have made special data protection provisions to make their data available under special contracts to the scientific community. In order to create an international comparative data base for microdata from these projects, the Panel Comparability Project (PACO) was formed for making the data comparable (see http://www.ceps.lu/paco/acceuil.cfm).
Election studies to national parliaments were among the best documented and most intensively used data sets in European countries. Despite the common intellectual roots of most of these election studies, research with a true comparative perspective remained remarkably rare, the question wordings for most countries were only available in the original language and the data sets were organised according to priorities of longitudinal research within countries rather than integrated for international comparison. To overcome these hurdles, the International Committee for Research into Elections and Representative Democracy (ICORE) was established in 1989.
The principal investigators, in charge of national election study programmes, agreed to provide English translations of all questionnaires, to bring the data sets together and to deposit all documentation with the Zentralarchiv in Cologne. This process was greatly supported by all CESSDA members. For the first time, a comprehensive data collection for most national election studies is available in one place, as described in the ICORE Inventory [9]. The European Election Study also participates in ICORE activities. Information on recent developments in electoral research is published in the ICORE News (see http://www.sowi.uni-mannheim.de/icorenews).
While ICORE initially concentrated on national election studies within Europe, it soon inspired a world wide project, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). This project has united researchers from more than fifty consolidated and emerging democracies. They agreed upon a common research design and to collect micro- and macro-level data within each polity following the standards passed in carefully prepared international conferences. Participating countries from middle and eastern Europe include Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The secretariat and data integration rest with the American National Election Study (see http://www.umich.edu/~cses).
The emergence of new political systems in eastern Europe after 1989 was a great challenge to test concepts and hypotheses which had been developed over decades in studying competitive elections in western democracies. Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Charles Lewis Taylor managed to create a consortium of scholars from all 24 central and east European countries to analyse the formation of new parties, party systems and electoral behaviour in the emerging democracies. The project requires contributors from each nation to cover historical context, election legislation and constitution, information on party laws, political parties, members and candidates, reporting of election results, social structural and attitudinal characteristics of voters from pre and post election surveys and the formation of government. All information including the data set documentation prepared in cooperation with the Zentralarchiv according to international standards is provided in English. This work is supported by funds from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation [10].
The international party manifestos group [11] includes 20 countries all over the world. They analysed party manifestos issued between 1945 and 1988. The content of the manifestos was coded into 56 issue categories, the sentences in each category were counted and transformed into a numerical data set. The original copies of the party manifestos collected in this project were deposited with the Zentralarchiv, the data sets are available from the UK Data Archive and the Zentralarchiv in Cologne.
The European Science Foundation programme Beliefs in Government (BIG) was the first European wide secondary analysis relying exclusively on existing databases available from the social science data archives. These databases yielded so much information that five volumes could be published after completion of the project in 1995 [12]. At the same time, this systematic approach revealed discontinuities, incomparabilities across time and societies, as well as "white spots in the landscape of data on social science and political orientations" [13]. It is obvious, that a priori coordination of surveys can produce data whith a much better potential for comparative research, than making data produced by different scholars, or at different points of time, comparable ex post. This motivated the Standing Committee for the Social Sciences of the European Science Foundation to develop a blueprint for an European Social Survey (ESS). A representative sample survey of the adult population of European nations, to be conducted every second year, shall comprise a mixture of fixed and variable question modules. Contextual data will be added from official statistical sources and data on nation specific institutional arrangements. The scientific management is in the hands of a steering committee with advice from a methodology committee. It is planned to finalise the blueprint by end of 1998 and to implement the ESS as an important element in the European infrastructure for social research.