The European Values Study and the European Social Survey agreed to increase their cooperation. The two organisations previously came together as partners in several Horizon 2020 projects including Synergies for Europe’s Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences (SERISS) and SUSTAIN-2. Both are also part of our new Horizon Europe project, Infra4NextGen, which will re-purpose and customise existing research services to support the five themes of the NextGenerationEU programme: Make it Green; Make it Digital; Make it Healthy; Make it Strong; and Make it Equal.
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed during the 5th International ESS Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, by Professor Rory Fitzgerald, ESS Director, and Professor Ruud Luijkx, EVS Executive Committee Chair.
The four-year agreement signifies closer working between the two organisations to share knowledge, expertise and survey methodology.
It has been agreed that questions on the collectivist and individualist values proposed by EVS will be fielded as a rotating module in a future round of the ESS. Work on developing a suitable module of questions previously fielded in the EVS began during the SUSTAIN-2 project and has been approved in principle by the ESS Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).
The two surveys will exchange knowledge around substantive research on measuring similar concepts and common topics, while using questions specific to each survey. Joint scientific dissemination activities will be planned to stimulate reasearch and exchanges among scholars using data from EVS and ESS.
The ESS and EVS, in close cooperation with the European Survey Research Association (ESRA), will seek to encourage networking between European infrastructures with the aim to encourage close collaboration between them. This will include the organisation of at least one annual meeting with representatives of these infrastructures, in order to facilitate knowledge sharing and discussions about the state of affairs in European social survey research.