Social Surveys

Comparative studies in social science are relatively well-established, with strong traditions of sharing data across countries to establish multi-national comparative data sets for studying cultural, social and political variations in attitudes and institutions. The EU-funded European Social Survey has regularly conducted cross-national surveys of social attitudes of the European population since 2002.

More recently, the ESS has been partnering with a number of researchers outside the EU to establish satellite studies of the ESS in Australia, Japan and South Africa. The extension of practices to these countries provide a new opportunity to compare and harmonise practices and technologies, focusing on Interoperability and Reusability.

This case study will undertake a comparative study of the data management, harmonization and integration practices of one of the satellite countries – Australia, through the AUSSI-ESS – and the core ESS, an ERIC social science infrastructure. It will then leverage the DDI metadata standards to understand how such multi-national collections could be made increasingly interoperable and reusable through shared procedural and technical development, and establish a set of guidelines and tools for the development of cross-national collections into the future.

Partners

Work Package Leads

Steven McEachern,
Australian Data Archive

Social Surveys Featured Outputs

WORLDFAIR PROJECT (D6.1) CROSS-NATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCES SURVEY FAIR IMPLEMENTATION CASE STUDIES

This report provides an overview of the data harmonisation practices of comparative (cross-national) social surveys, through case studies of: (1) the European Social Survey (ESS) and (2) a satellite study, the Australian Social Survey International – European Social Survey (AUSSI-ESS).

WorldFAIR (D6.2)
Cross-national Social Sciences survey best practice guidelines

This report outlines a proposed workflow for the processing of data harmonisation of social surveys, that takes account of the practical steps required to bring diverse content together in a machine-actionable way, and that could best take advantage of external registered, persistent content.
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WorldFAIR (D6.3) PILOT TESTING HARMONISATION WORKFLOWS

This report picks up from the previous two to test out proof-of-concept implementations of the workflows outlined in D6.2 to trial the use of standardised workflows based on registry services available at the Australian Data Archive (ADA) and Sikt through their respective Colectica registries.
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