Website: European Social Survey

The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted every two years across Europe since 2001.

Following an application to the European Commission which was submitted by the UK on behalf of 14 other countries, the ESS was awarded ERIC status on 30th November 2013.

The Director of the ESS ERIC is Rory Fitzgerald and the ESS ERIC headquarters are at City University London.

The survey measures the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of diverse populations in more than thirty nations. The main aims of the ESS are:

+ to chart stability and change in social structure, conditions and attitudes in Europe and to interpret how Europe’s social, political and moral fabric is changing

+ to achieve and spread higher standards of rigour in cross-national research in the social sciences, including for example, questionnaire design and pre-testing, sampling, data collection, reduction of bias and the reliability of questions

+ to introduce soundly-based indicators of national progress, based on citizens’ perceptions and judgements of key aspects of their societies

+ to undertake and facilitate the training of European social researchers in comparative quantitative measurement and analysis

+ to improve the visibility and outreach of data on social change among academics, policy makers and the wider public

Prior to becoming an ERIC, funding for the ESS has been received from the European Commission's Framework programmes, from the European Science Foundation, and from national funding councils in participating countries. Funding of the ESS ERIC is via Member and Observer contributions to central costs and to national participation costs.