The University of Mannheim hosts the upcoming 4th ESS International Conference on 15-17 April 2019. On Monday 15 afternoon, Ruud Luijkx, Loek Halman and Vera Lomazzi chair the session  F1: “Bridging ESS and EVS to study social attitudes, norms and values in a troubled Europe”.

The session takes place at 2.30-4.10PM, room 204.

Cross-sectional surveys  in Europe such as the European Social Survey (ESS) and the European Values Study (EVS), support scholars aiming at studying human values in comparative perspective, both across countries and over time, by providing high quality data concerning several life domains. The ESS collects data through rotating modules every 2 years since 2002 in a varying number of countries (the maximum was 31 participating countries in 2008), 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 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 countries.

The session proposes papers that adopt the combined use of ESS and EVS in the comparative study of values and studies investigating the potential bridging of EVS measures and ESS items from methodological perspective:

F1.1. Malnar, Brina: Informing cross-survey cooperation: Exploring patterns of academic usage in four general purpose surveys

F1.2. Lomazzi, Vera & Luijkx, Ruud: A first comparison of questions from the European Values Study and the core module of the European Social Survey

F1.3. Ortmanns, Verena & Schneider, Silke L.: Comparing the measurement of educational attainment in ESS and EVS

F1.4. Biolcati, Ferruccio & Molteni, Francesco: Using cumulative datasets to study religious change in Europe: a focus on ESS and EVS

F1.5. Matejková, Alexandra: Gender differences in the importance of work and family roles in Slovak Republic: Concepts about “ideal” family relationships in ESS and EVS comparison

More information on the ESS conference, including the preliminary program, can be found on the European Social Survey website.