Flemish Participation ESFRI-project European Social Survey.

The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven survey conducted in several European countries. The survey creates an international database about social and political attitudes. The ESS is a long-term project which started in 2001 and is now (2012) in its sixth biennial round. The general objective of the ESS can be specified in three crucial aspects of the infrastructure: (1) the collection of data about continuity and change over time in peoples public attitudes and behaviour patterns; (2) the improvement of the quality of cross national attitude measurement and (3) the development of social indicators as a regular means of monitoring the quality of life across nations. To realize these objectives a long-term funding to maintain and expand the datasets in each participating country is necessary. The implementation of ESS in Flanders/Belgium must be organized according to the specifications of the Central Coordinating Team. These specifications result in a set of tasks related to each component of the survey (Sample, questionnaire, implementation of the fieldwork, event monitoring and data protocol). A National Coordinator is responsible for the implementation of the survey in each country. The research project makes it possible to implement the sixth round of ESS in Flanders.

Keywords:Social indicators, Social and political Attitude, Survey, Europe

Disciplines:Applied sociology, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology