RECSM researchers are part of Core Scientific Team of the European Social Survey for the 4th time
They contribute to the questionnaire development, translation and data quality assessment, as well as the implementation of international standards in the Survey methodology.
The term of RECSM researchers, Wiebke Weber and her colleagues, as members of the Core Scientific Team (CST) of European Social Survey- ERIC are renewed for the 4th time. The new period started on 1st of June 2019, and it will end on 31st of May 2021.
RECSM researchers are involved in the ESS since its beginning in 2001 but since it became a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) the structure changes and every two years the tasks are revisited, adjusted, renegotiated, and renewal of being part of the CST is not granted.
RECSM researchers are involved in the ESS since its beginning in 2001
The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted across Europe since 2001. Every two years, face-to-face interviews are conducted with newly selected, cross-sectional samples. The survey measures the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of diverse populations in more than thirty nations. The ESS data is available free of charge for non-commercial use and can be downloaded from this website after a short registration.
The role of the RECSM researchers in the European Social Survey
The role of the Core Scientific Team (CST) is supporting in the design and implementation of the ESS ERIC Work Programme. RECSM researchers as a CST are part of the questionnaire development, translation and data quality assessment within the ESS life circle.
The cross-national features of the survey has challenges go beyond those of surveys conducted in a single country or language. Designing high quality questions that are as comparable as possible across countries, and translating the questionnaire that are based on translation quality assessment are essential for ESS. RECSM researchers play a role as a CST to achieve the aim of the ESS that are implementing high quality standards in its methodology and improving standards in the field of cross-national surveys more generally.
RECSM researchers work to achieve implementing high quality standards in the methodology for the ESS.
In the translation process, a selection of items are subject to the translation quality assessment steps: translation verification and Survey Quality Predictor (SQP) coding. All translated questionnaires must be pre-tested following the completion of verification and SQP coding which is developed by the RECSM researchers. The Survey Quality Predictor (SQP) software is a free license online software that can predict the measurement quality of questions in more than twenty languages.
The CST undertakes a range of activities related to data quality assessment throughout the survey life cycle and across ESS rounds: these include evaluating the quality and comparability of its measurement instruments, assessing the socio-demographic sample composition using external benchmark data and assessing the process and output quality of the survey.
In addition, RECSM researchers are also leading on ESS methodological research on "Quality of Survey Questions / Correction for Measurement Error Using Survey Data" and "Multilingual Survey Research".
Wiebke Weber is the head of the team, Melanie Revilla and Diana Zavala-Rojas are both deputy heads, and together with Jorge Cimentada, Begüm Dereli, Patricia Melo, André Pirralha, Hannah Schwarz they will be working on the different tasks outlined for the next two years.