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The European Social Survey (ESS), established in 2001 and located at City University London, is a major multinational social survey involving the participation of 36 countries. It is designed to monitor change and explain the interaction between Europe's changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of its diverse populations. The impact of the ESS is extensive nationally and internationally particularly through improving survey methodology and through the subsequent adoption of these standards and practices by other national and international survey programmes. This has led to higher standards of measurement in policy-oriented surveys and commercial survey practice. The ESS was awarded the Descartes Prize for `Excellence in scientific collaborative research' in 2005 in recognition of its world-leading quality. In 2014 the ESS will become the first UK-hosted European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ESS ERIC) when it is launched on 31st January at the Royal Society in London by Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn of the European Commission Directorate-General (Research and Innovation) and the UK Minister for Universities and Science, the Rt. Hon. David Willetts MP.
Research undertaken at City University London in collaboration with the University of Sussex led to a new methodological approach being developed through interaction with survey researchers within the framework of the European Social Survey (ESS), supported by European funding. The new methodological tool enhances understanding and analysis of media claims by governments and policy-makers. The work undertaken has addressed the need for interpretation of attitude questions across different countries and variations in responses to cross-national studies.
The impact was achieved through 1) the design of new methodologies for the coding of media claims by governments and policy-makers; 2) providing contextual data on media events; 3) the provision of guidance manuals and training across eight European countries for coding and archiving data for media analysis; and 4) the development of a media events framework for the analysis and understanding by policy-makers of `normal' and `exceptional' findings of public opinion surveys.
The British Household Panel Study (BHPS) is a longitudinal survey that has followed a representative sample of individuals since the early 1990s. The resource is used routinely by government departments (e.g. DWP, HMRC, Cabinet Office) and third-sector bodies (e.g. Children's Society) for their research and for monitoring progress towards policy targets. The data's longitudinal character has helped to transform government departments' understanding of the goals of social policies, and allowed them to redefine targets in ways not possible without the BHPS. Examples include DWP's monitoring of persistent poverty, which uses BHPS data to estimate the probability of an individual living in poverty for several successive years.