Conference Agenda

For more than 20 years, one of the main aims of the European Social Survey (ESS) has been to provide researchers, policy makers and the wider community high quality data measuring change (and stability) over time in Europe. A significant proportion of the quality measures in contemporary cross-national surveys such as the ESS is implemented at the early stages of the survey life cycle (the design phase), be it related to questionnaire design, sample design, fieldwork plans, translation or more technical aspects of the data specifications. While emphasizing the importance of these contributions to overall data quality, this session aims to highlight the data quality management in the ESS at the data collection and post-data collection stage. This may include well-known survey disciplines such as fieldwork monitoring and data processing, but also user contributions to data quality through what may be dubbed “the life cycle feedback-loop” in which exploration and analyses by data users result in new and improved versions of data and metadata, traditionally an important, if less communicated, part of the validation and quality enhancement of the ESS and surveys in general. Data processing, from interim data quality checks to post-collection data cleaning may often appear as a black box to researchers and other end data users. However, the ESS prides itself on its transparency via thorough documentation and communication. Hence, the proposed session aims to present in detail our data processing and quality control procedures, clarifying which procedures are used, and examine their impact on data quality. The session is primarily focused on interim and post-collection data management at the central level but we would also invite papers dealing with related issues on a decentral (country) level. Furthermore, we would welcome papers highlighting data user contributions to data quality in the ESS. Papers related to all these issues from other surveys would also be relevant to this session.

For nearly two years, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a new challenge to democracy as governments around the world imposed harsh containment measures that affected nearly every aspect of economic, social, and political life. Round 10 of the ESS, which contained a special COVID-19 module (Hanson et al. 2021), and the CROss-National Online Survey (CRONOS) Panel offer a unique opportunity to reflect and reconsider the implications of the pandemic on democracy. The session welcomes papers that explore the pandemic’s implications on trust to political institutions, evaluations of democracy, and political participation, as well as papers that will look into the interplay among partisanship, socio-economic attitudes, social media use, conspiracy beliefs, and evaluation of government priorities and compliance with government policies during the pandemic. The session particularly encourages the use of the longitudinal and cross-national aspect of the ESS data, the use of multiples waves in the CRONOS Panel data, and papers that otherwise leverage the ESS data in field and survey experiments. Papers that use empirical findings to draw policy recommendations are also particularly welcome.

The CROss-National Online Survey 2 (CRONOS-2) panel is the world’s first large-scale cross-national probability-based online panel following an input-harmonised approach – panel recruitment, setup, maintenance, and data processing were guided by the same methodological principles in all participating countries. The panel was conducted in 12 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The CRONOS-2 project capitalised on an existing probability-based face-to-face survey to establish a probability-based sample for the web panel. After completing the ESS Round 10 face-to-face interview, respondents aged over 18 and with internet access were invited to participate in six 20-minute online surveys, along with an additional short Welcome Survey. Four of these main waves (Wave 1, Wave 2, Wave 4, and Wave 5), were cross-national waves, with identical questions asked across all participating countries. Wave 3 and Wave 6 were country-specific waves, allowing individual countries to design their own questionnaires. The data collected online can be merged with the ESS Round 10 dataset creating a larger dataset that includes both online data and data from the ESS face-to-face interview. This session includes papers that use CRONOS-2 data, either alone or in combination with the ESS data.

Schwartz’ human values framework is well established in the social sciences, but the area is still vibrant. Important novel streams of research are value heterogeneity within and between groups, emphasis on individuals’ value profiles instead of single values, and changes in values over time. With his 21-item instrument, Schwartz’ human values have been in the European Social Survey (ESS) across over 30 countries in all rounds from 2002 onwards. Lately, the values have also been included in the ESS-based surveys in Australia and South Africa. The values in the ESS have given us not only insight into the values of individuals but also in how human values shape attitudes and behaviors. The ESS values data have been used in studies focusing on into peoples’ well-being, attitudes towards the environment, attitudes towards immigrants, political choice, entrepreneurship, and gender attitudes to name a few. In addition to studies on the impact of values on societal issues, researchers have also studied the values structure itself. Topics included amongst others the structure of human values across countries and studies assessing measurement invariance of the human values in the ESS across countries. Research on values is still vibrant. Methodological topics are still in development as, e.g., the issue of measurement invariance is not fully resolved. Moreover, academics and also policy makers are more and more interested in peoples’ values and in particular in how they differ across groups within and across societies. Recent research is social psychology has shown that despite being quite stable values still change over time and in particular in younger age groups. Values were found to change till about 30 years of age and then stabilise. As the ESS includes many waves and covers a 20-year period this provides opportunities not only to assess change between birth cohorts, but also allows us to assess this change across groups that are more than 20 years apart. In the symposium we are open to many contributions related to changes in Schwartz’ human values over time and these can be either substantive or methodological.

Research over the past two decades has highlighted the pervasive impact of social inequalities on various aspects of people's lives, including their perceptions of society, morality, and justice. These inequalities influence attitudes towards political governance and leadership, as well as individuals' self-perceptions and lifestyle choices. In European societies, social inequalities play a central role in shaping people's lives and influence their motivation for justice, ideological beliefs, perceived legitimacy, well-being, trust, and support for equality. The European Social Survey (ESS) has provided valuable insights into these dimensions over several rounds of surveys, with a particular focus on the ESS9.
This thematic session aims to serve as a platform for researchers from different disciplines to use the data from ESS to foster academic discussions on social inequality, dimensions of social justice and related legitimacy processes. Possible topics include the relationships between actual and perceived inequality, different forms of inequality (such as nationality, social status, gender, race, or ethnicity) and their links to political behaviour and attitudes (e.g., ideologies, voting behaviour), trust and political legitimacy (e.g., populism, anti-elitism, demands for strong leadership, authoritarianism). We also look at individual and collective indicators of well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, self-esteem, interpersonal trust) and attitudes towards intergroup relations and social and cultural diversity (e.g., racism and ethnic discrimination). These dynamics of inequality can be analysed at both individual and collective levels. We invite studies that offer relevant insights into understanding the psychology of inequalities. These include studies that incorporate contextual variables such as countries or regions, studies of individual countries with a specific national focus, comparative studies of multiple countries, or mixed-methods studies that supplement ESS data with other types of information. Researchers are encouraged to consider the different levels of social justice and democratic traditions in different national contexts. We invite researchers working on these topics to submit proposals for this session, emphasising the use of ESS data to allow for comprehensive analysis and nuanced interpretations.

Since its release, scholars from various disciplines all around the world use the ESS as source for research on persons with immigrant background. An important reason for its popularity among immigrant researchers is its bi-annual repetition and the regular participation of many Western European countries that both allow to combine data of several rounds and/or countries, resulting in a decent number of respondents with immigrant background. This circumvents the problem of small numbers that researchers usually face when using population survey data for studying immigrants. Moreover, its broad range of questions on (political) attitudes and behaviour is extra-ordinary for a multi-themed population survey, making the ESS often the only data source for studying these topics on immigrants or groups that mainly are of immigrant background, such as Muslims. At the same time, there are reasons for reservations regarding its authoritative use on immigrants. Although ESS displays a strong awareness for the need of research on immigrants by including items that enable their identification among respondents, it is not an immigrant survey. There is no specific sampling strategy for immigrant groups, and the questionnaire is only presented in a limited set of languages– a major obstacle for the participation of new immigrants or of immigrants with little knowledge of these languages. For this reason, non-response among immigrants is probably higher than among other population groups and not at random, which is considered a severe challenge to obtain unbiased results. Although these and other sources for potential biases are well known among scholars, they have been neither systematically investigated nor frequently addressed in publications using the ESS. Among the open questions are: how biased is immigrant data really, and to what extent are substantial results affected by this? How can we take this into account in our analyses and when interpreting the results?

Many aspects of the cultural and structural fabric of societies are shaped by social scripts about the timing of life. Some of these scripts concern ideas about when, in what order, and in what combination people should experience major life transitions: leaving the parental home, starting a full-time job, becoming parents (after marriage or not), or retiring, or being employed as a parent to young children. When do young people become old enough to be considered ‘adults’ ? When are adults considered to be “old”? Such scripts help to organize people’s lives and reduce uncertainty about the future. People use them to evaluate progress in their and others’ lives, and lagging in achieving major milestones can affect individual and family well-being. The extent to which deviations from such scripts are acceptable tells us something about the level of tolerance in society. If a gap exists between these social expectations and opportunities to enact them, governments and citizens alike can foster actions to better align ideas and opportunities. In this sense, scripts are not only adapted in response to changing circumstances, but they can also be sources of social change. Scripts of life tend to differ for men and women, and these differences are fundamental in informing gender relations in societies; smaller differences in expectations about the timing of women’s and men’s lives suggest greater gender equality. Data collected in Round 3 (2006/07) and Round 9 (2018/19) of the ESS included a module on the timing of life (for topline results, Billari et al., 2021). Between these two time points, societies confronted important economic and institutional changes. The Great Recession, especially, profoundly influenced the lives of Europeans. Young people were hit hardest, making youth empowerment a key policy challenge. Adults were also affected, with labour market difficulties disrupting family choices, particularly for women, bringing pressing problems related to work-life balance and gender equality. The Great Recession, in combination with increased longevity, has fuelled debates about the sustainability of pension schemes and active ageing. How have Europeans’ ideas about the timing of life changed over these 12 years? This session aims to accommodate contributions on these issues based on these ESS modules. Billari, F.C., Badolato, L., Hagestad, G.O., Liefbroer, A.C., Settersten, R. A., Jr., Spéder, Z., & Van Bavel, J. (2021). The timing of life: Topline results from Round 9 of the ESS.

A virtuous circle redux: The media and trustworthiness in the digital age Professor Pippa Norris (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) Should the news media be blamed for political cynicism? Part I describes the theoretical debate on this issue. This study seeks to examine empirical evidence concerning two arguments. The virtuous circle thesis predicts that at individual level, selection effects and media effects interact. Activists will be likely to pay attention to the news and public affairs. And knowledge gained from this process will strengthen informed judgments of political trustworthiness and lower barriers to civic engagement. Moreover, secondly, at macro-level, the information environment matters. Open societies expand the capacity of critical citizens to identify trustworthy agencies accurately, by providing two-sided forms of political communications about the performance of the authorities. By contrast, closed societies restricting the free press are likely to foster credulous trust in strongman leaders, which is unwarranted by their performance. Part II outlines the sources of survey cross-national and time-series data used to test these propositions from the European Social Survey in 39 countries. Part III presents the results. Part IV summarises the main conclusions and considers their broader implications.

For nearly two years, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a new challenge to democracy as governments around the world imposed harsh containment measures that affected nearly every aspect of economic, social, and political life. Round 10 of the ESS, which contained a special COVID-19 module (Hanson et al. 2021), and the CROss-National Online Survey (CRONOS) Panel offer a unique opportunity to reflect and reconsider the implications of the pandemic on democracy. The session welcomes papers that explore the pandemic’s implications on trust to political institutions, evaluations of democracy, and political participation, as well as papers that will look into the interplay among partisanship, socio-economic attitudes, social media use, conspiracy beliefs, and evaluation of government priorities and compliance with government policies during the pandemic. The session particularly encourages the use of the longitudinal and cross-national aspect of the ESS data, the use of multiples waves in the CRONOS Panel data, and papers that otherwise leverage the ESS data in field and survey experiments. Papers that use empirical findings to draw policy recommendations are also particularly welcome.

The module on attitudes to immigration has been fielded in the 1st and the 7th rounds of the ESS, and it is going to be fielded again in Round 12. This module has been widely used by academics and policy makers, and the topic remains highly salient for theory, research and political debates. The key questions from the previous modules which have been the most widely used include the measurement of attitudes toward different immigrant groups, realistic and symbolic threat, contact quantity and quality with immigrants, social distance, subjective group size, conditions to accept immigrants, fraternal deprivation, or racism, just to name a few. A small number of core items on immigration have been asked in every round of the European Social Survey. In this session we invite researchers to present their ongoing research on attitudes toward immigration and related topics using ESS data, particularly (but not necessarily) from a comparative perspective.

The CROss-National Online Survey 2 (CRONOS-2) panel is the world’s first large-scale cross-national probability-based online panel following an input-harmonised approach – panel recruitment, setup, maintenance, and data processing were guided by the same methodological principles in all participating countries. The panel was conducted in 12 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The CRONOS-2 project capitalised on an existing probability-based face-to-face survey to establish a probability-based sample for the web panel. After completing the ESS Round 10 face-to-face interview, respondents aged over 18 and with internet access were invited to participate in six 20-minute online surveys, along with an additional short Welcome Survey. Four of these main waves (Wave 1, Wave 2, Wave 4, and Wave 5), were cross-national waves, with identical questions asked across all participating countries. Wave 3 and Wave 6 were country-specific waves, allowing individual countries to design their own questionnaires. The data collected online can be merged with the ESS Round 10 dataset creating a larger dataset that includes both online data and data from the ESS face-to-face interview. This session includes papers that use CRONOS-2 data, either alone or in combination with the ESS data.

Schwartz’ human values framework is well established in the social sciences, but the area is still vibrant. Important novel streams of research are value heterogeneity within and between groups, emphasis on individuals’ value profiles instead of single values, and changes in values over time. With his 21-item instrument, Schwartz’ human values have been in the European Social Survey (ESS) across over 30 countries in all rounds from 2002 onwards. Lately, the values have also been included in the ESS-based surveys in Australia and South Africa. The values in the ESS have given us not only insight into the values of individuals but also in how human values shape attitudes and behaviors. The ESS values data have been used in studies focusing on into peoples’ well-being, attitudes towards the environment, attitudes towards immigrants, political choice, entrepreneurship, and gender attitudes to name a few. In addition to studies on the impact of values on societal issues, researchers have also studied the values structure itself. Topics included amongst others the structure of human values across countries and studies assessing measurement invariance of the human values in the ESS across countries. Research on values is still vibrant. Methodological topics are still in development as, e.g., the issue of measurement invariance is not fully resolved. Moreover, academics and also policy makers are more and more interested in peoples’ values and in particular in how they differ across groups within and across societies. Recent research is social psychology has shown that despite being quite stable values still change over time and in particular in younger age groups. Values were found to change till about 30 years of age and then stabilise. As the ESS includes many waves and covers a 20-year period this provides opportunities not only to assess change between birth cohorts, but also allows us to assess this change across groups that are more than 20 years apart. In the symposium we are open to many contributions related to changes in Schwartz’ human values over time and these can be either substantive or methodological.

Over the past few decades, European societies have witnessed unprecedented increases in inequalities in wealth and income. Faced with more flexible labour markets, skill-based technological change, ongoing demographic change and migration, European welfare models have been unable to effectively address these rising inequalities. Accordingly, inequalities in wealth, income, education and other social resources and their consequences for social cohesion, redistribution, and democracy more generally have attracted attention, both in academic and public debate. While some argue that increasing inequalities are always harmful and serve as proof of growing injustices in society, others see a certain degree of inequality as a necessary component of a market economy. They argue that differences in individual talents, investments made in one’s own education, or even motivation must be rewarded. Whether inequalities are large or small, good or bad, just or unjust, always seems to depend on the normative perspective from which they are illuminated. Empirical justice research shows that people differ in their preference for certain distributions and distribution rules and thus ultimately also in their perception and evaluation of existing inequalities. This session proposes to attract and showcase some of the recent scholarship developed with the most important survey data about empirical justice produced up to date in terms of population coverage and cross-country comparability. The ESS Round 9 module - Justice and Fairness in Europe: Coping with Growing Inequalities and Heterogeneities - emphasized the aforementioned issues and allowed for the in-depth study of justice perceptions across Europe. The module, which was fielded in 2018/2019, allows the study of perceptions of justice for self and others regarding different outcomes such as income, wealth, education and job chances. Drawing on this rich pool of information, this session calls for contribution focusing on the normative views people hold on the principles that should guide the fair allocation of goods and burdens within a society, the fairness of incomes for self and for others, the fairness of life chances, and the fairness of related political procedures.

In cross- cultural survey projects, national questionnaires are usually developed by translating one or more source questionnaires into all relevant target languages. For the comparability of the data gathered by such multilingual survey projects, it is of utmost importance that the quality of all translations is of highest quality, and that all translated questionnaires do ideally “ask the same questions” as the source questionnaire(s). The ESS has been the first cross-cultural survey to rigorously implement the translation scheme “TRAPD” (consisting of the steps Translation, Review, Adjudication, Pretesting and Documentation), based on an interdisciplinary team or committee approach, since its beginning. Currently preparing its 12th round, translating its questionnaires has been a particular focus in all ESS rounds so far. By setting high standards to its translations and often being at the forefront of new questionnaire translation developments, the ESS’ translation scheme has been inspiring others within the community. This does not only refer to the translation process as such – including, for instance, its approaches to translate into shared languages or to systematically assess its translation qualities –, but also to developing its source questionnaire, which is formulated in a way to minimise later translation problems as much as possible by involving translation experts in the source questionnaire development and carrying out “advance translations”. Experimenting with and implementing innovations, e.g., in the field of translation technology, is a core element of the ESS translation approaches. This session invites presentations on various aspects related to questionnaire translation or survey language in a broader sense, whether linked to the ESS or not. Topics may cover different approaches or methods to translate questionnaires, to assess or measure translation quality; technical and other innovations in the field; looking closer at existing ESS translations, e.g., into shared languages, comparing or assessing particular translations or expressions; discussing translatability matters, also related to questionnaire design or pretesting; other linguistic or language-related topics, such as minority languages, choice of interview or questionnaire language, easy or plain language, gender aspects in language, or the influence of translation and/or language on survey results.

Increasing political polarization is often seen as one of the contemporary challenges to liberal democracy, and there is an ongoing debate about polarization’s causes and consequences. High levels of polarization are thought to, among other things, reduce social cohesion by increasing the distance - whether ideological or emotional - between groups based on partisan affinities, thereby increasing the cost of inter-group cooperation, finding common ground, and working toward shared goals. Moreover, high polarization increases support for illiberal parties and the readiness to favor partisan goals at the cost of democratic principles, which pose a direct threat to contemporary democracy. Increases in polarization have also been linked to the rise of populist parties and to anti-populist mobilization, which further increase polarization. While research on polarization is extensive, it continues to be dominated by studies of the United States, and is fragmented due to the variety of conceptualizations and operationalizations of polarization. Thus, the aim of this session is thus to examine the causes and consequences of political polarization in Europe with an eye on reconciling different analytical approaches.

This session will showcase research that analyses ESS data, exclusively or alongside other sources, to map societal change and stability. This session will focus on the attitudes of and towards immigrants, national and European attachment and the contextual factors driving some political preferences.

For nearly two years, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a new challenge to democracy as governments around the world imposed harsh containment measures that affected nearly every aspect of economic, social, and political life. Round 10 of the ESS, which contained a special COVID-19 module (Hanson et al. 2021), and the CROss-National Online Survey (CRONOS) Panel offer a unique opportunity to reflect and reconsider the implications of the pandemic on democracy. The session welcomes papers that explore the pandemic’s implications on trust to political institutions, evaluations of democracy, and political participation, as well as papers that will look into the interplay among partisanship, socio-economic attitudes, social media use, conspiracy beliefs, and evaluation of government priorities and compliance with government policies during the pandemic. The session particularly encourages the use of the longitudinal and cross-national aspect of the ESS data, the use of multiples waves in the CRONOS Panel data, and papers that otherwise leverage the ESS data in field and survey experiments. Papers that use empirical findings to draw policy recommendations are also particularly welcome.

The module on attitudes to immigration has been fielded in the 1st and the 7th rounds of the ESS, and it is going to be fielded again in Round 12. This module has been widely used by academics and policy makers, and the topic remains highly salient for theory, research and political debates. The key questions from the previous modules which have been the most widely used include the measurement of attitudes toward different immigrant groups, realistic and symbolic threat, contact quantity and quality with immigrants, social distance, subjective group size, conditions to accept immigrants, fraternal deprivation, or racism, just to name a few. A small number of core items on immigration have been asked in every round of the European Social Survey. In this session we invite researchers to present their ongoing research on attitudes toward immigration and related topics using ESS data, particularly (but not necessarily) from a comparative perspective.

The CROss-National Online Survey 2 (CRONOS-2) panel is the world’s first large-scale cross-national probability-based online panel following an input-harmonised approach – panel recruitment, setup, maintenance, and data processing were guided by the same methodological principles in all participating countries. The panel was conducted in 12 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The CRONOS-2 project capitalised on an existing probability-based face-to-face survey to establish a probability-based sample for the web panel. After completing the ESS Round 10 face-to-face interview, respondents aged over 18 and with internet access were invited to participate in six 20-minute online surveys, along with an additional short Welcome Survey. Four of these main waves (Wave 1, Wave 2, Wave 4, and Wave 5), were cross-national waves, with identical questions asked across all participating countries. Wave 3 and Wave 6 were country-specific waves, allowing individual countries to design their own questionnaires. The data collected online can be merged with the ESS Round 10 dataset creating a larger dataset that includes both online data and data from the ESS face-to-face interview. This session includes papers that use CRONOS-2 data, either alone or in combination with the ESS data.

Social scientists have long been interested in whether attitudes and value preferences differ between birth cohorts and generations. A classic example of research into generational differences is the postulation of value differences between European birth cohorts in materialist and post-materialist value orientations by Ronald Inglehart. In this view, differences in the predominant socio-economic situation when growing up between generations lead to value differences that divide generations. However, the question of generational differences is not only interesting in its own right, but it is also crucial for explaining social change overall. Over time, generational differences may gradually lead to a whole new social climate on specific issues, such as climate change or same-sex marriages. Indeed, there is a wide range of social issues where younger generations may hold very different views than their parents and grandparents, such as the role of religion in public or private life or the provision of social benefits to people in need. The session is open for contributions addressing questions such as: In what areas do generational differences exist and in which countries or parts of Europe? How do such differences relate to material conditions, cultural contexts and institutional settings in the countries where they can be detected? Do such differences change over time, and do they converge or contribute to a polarisation of European societies? What are the underlying factors and mechanisms that lead to generational differences? How do attitudinal changes between generations contribute to societal change as a whole? All contributions should be based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS). The ESS is a unique data source to address these questions, as it offers a wide range of attitudinal measures that can be employed to investigate generational differences. Measures of interest in this context can be found in the core questionnaire, such as general values based on Schwartz’s basic human values scale, trust in institutions, and religiosity, but also through its rotating modules on topics such as experiences and expressions of ageism (2008), attitudes towards welfare provision (2008, 2016), climate change and energy (2016), immigration (2014), justice and fairness (2018), as well as understandings and evaluations of democracy (2012, 2020). Similarly welcome are methodological contributions dealing with the well-known challenge of disentangling age, cohort and period effects in analysing generational differences in attitudes and values, potentially exploiting the multi-country perspective the ESS has to offer.

In terms of its methodological rigour and data quality, the ESS has been a benchmark international comparative face-to-face survey project for over 20 years. However, the upcoming transition from interviewer-administered to self-completion survey brings new methodological and ethical challenges to the ESS, with respondent engagement being one of them. To this end, new ways of respondent motivation in self-completion surveys need to be developed and evaluated thereby ensuring that the ESS remains the benchmark when it comes to methodological and data quality in international comparative surveys. In face-to-face surveys, trained interviewers can keep the respondent focused on the survey and can even stop the interview when the external context (circumstances) is not appropriate. It is much more challenging to keep the respondent focused (solely) on the survey in self-completion: a paper questionnaire offers no control or information on the respondent engagement or number of sittings, and Web surveys are conducted on devices with multiple applications constantly battling for user attention. While not true for all question types and all respondents, research into cognitive processes shows that respondent focus and response times generally affect the quality of the responses (Tourangeau, 1989; Yan and Tourangeau, 2007). Passive monitoring of the respondent by collecting paradata when they are completing a self-completion survey can provide vast and diverse information on their level of engagement. Still, it cannot increase the quality of responses while the interview is being completed in the way a trained interviewer can. Active monitoring and intervention (e.g. notifications when the respondent is speeding, straight-lining, not responding, etc.) can partly increase the respondent's focus but can also influence the responses or even willingness to complete the survey. Graphical approaches and gamification can make the survey more enjoyable. Still, the literature shows that the researchers should mainly focus on the fundamental components of respondent burden coming from the instrument itself (e.g. Guin, T. D.-L. et al, 2012). The session is focused on both instrument design to keep the respondents engaged and approaches to monitoring and assisting the respondent through the survey in an ethically appropriate manner with the aim to produce data of the highest possible quality.

Over the past few decades, European societies have witnessed unprecedented increases in inequalities in wealth and income. Faced with more flexible labour markets, skill-based technological change, ongoing demographic change and migration, European welfare models have been unable to effectively address these rising inequalities. Accordingly, inequalities in wealth, income, education and other social resources and their consequences for social cohesion, redistribution, and democracy more generally have attracted attention, both in academic and public debate. While some argue that increasing inequalities are always harmful and serve as proof of growing injustices in society, others see a certain degree of inequality as a necessary component of a market economy. They argue that differences in individual talents, investments made in one’s own education, or even motivation must be rewarded. Whether inequalities are large or small, good or bad, just or unjust, always seems to depend on the normative perspective from which they are illuminated. Empirical justice research shows that people differ in their preference for certain distributions and distribution rules and thus ultimately also in their perception and evaluation of existing inequalities. This session proposes to attract and showcase some of the recent scholarship developed with the most important survey data about empirical justice produced up to date in terms of population coverage and cross-country comparability. The ESS Round 9 module - Justice and Fairness in Europe: Coping with Growing Inequalities and Heterogeneities - emphasized the aforementioned issues and allowed for the in-depth study of justice perceptions across Europe. The module, which was fielded in 2018/2019, allows the study of perceptions of justice for self and others regarding different outcomes such as income, wealth, education and job chances. Drawing on this rich pool of information, this session calls for contribution focusing on the normative views people hold on the principles that should guide the fair allocation of goods and burdens within a society, the fairness of incomes for self and for others, the fairness of life chances, and the fairness of related political procedures.

Social policies increasingly focus on enhancing population wellbeing, and it is becoming more common to quantify the progress made toward greater human wellbeing and investigate its determinants using psychological variables such as life satisfaction, emotions, basic psychological needs, and feelings of meaning and purpose. Pioneering research from the fields of psychology and economics have concentrated on intra-individual (e.g., socio-economic or demographic) factors or the impact of the social environment (e.g., markers of social cohesion or socio-economic deprivation), while recent research from diverse fields, including sociology and geography also assess the effects of environmental contexts on wellbeing (e.g., the impact of ongoing climate change on wellbeing and mental health are already very noticeable in several ways). The European Social Survey has been at the forefront of measuring subjective wellbeing and is unique in offering data suitable to almost all disciplines and their differing perspectives on wellbeing. Since its inception, satisfaction and happiness questions and indicators of social wellbeing ("social capital") have been included in every wave of the survey. In addition, the ESS collected more in-depth psychological wellbeing reports in 2006 and 2012. For Round 12 (2025), a repeat of this more comprehensive personal and social wellbeing module is planned. We want to use the 2024 ESS conference as an opportunity to bring together academics from different fields to discuss the most recent research on personal and social wellbeing using ESS data and to explore the opportunities arising from the repeat module. We are interested in eliciting research that uses the ESS wellbeing data from various perspectives. For example, we are interested in research that makes use of the ability to link ESS data with economic and sociodemographic data (which may be at national and subnational scales), assess rural-urban differences in wellbeing, or research that uses detailed wellbeing measures in the ESS to answer psychological research questions (e.g., to develop wellbeing profiles). Of course, we equally welcome research that uses the ESS personal and social wellbeing module data in other innovative ways.

Increasing political polarization is often seen as one of the contemporary challenges to liberal democracy, and there is an ongoing debate about polarization’s causes and consequences. High levels of polarization are thought to, among other things, reduce social cohesion by increasing the distance - whether ideological or emotional - between groups based on partisan affinities, thereby increasing the cost of inter-group cooperation, finding common ground, and working toward shared goals. Moreover, high polarization increases support for illiberal parties and the readiness to favor partisan goals at the cost of democratic principles, which pose a direct threat to contemporary democracy. Increases in polarization have also been linked to the rise of populist parties and to anti-populist mobilization, which further increase polarization. While research on polarization is extensive, it continues to be dominated by studies of the United States, and is fragmented due to the variety of conceptualizations and operationalizations of polarization. Thus, the aim of this session is thus to examine the causes and consequences of political polarization in Europe with an eye on reconciling different analytical approaches.

The Exhibitions Hall will also be open on Tuesday 9 July (9.15am-12.50pm).