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).

New methods and data sources confirm that income and wealth inequalities have continued to increase over the last three decades. The level of perceived inequality influences the demand for economic redistribution, but it is not the only factor at work in the mental map of attitudes towards redistribution. Beliefs about the source of inequality are key to understanding the desired level of redistribution. People who believe that inequality arises from differences in effort will tend to demand less redistribution, while those who believe that inequality is due to differences in circumstances beyond the control of individuals will tend to demand more redistribution. Similarly, earlier studies regularly found that political ideology was an important predictor of attitudes towards redistribution, but recent evidence suggests that both those who consider themselves on the left and those who consider themselves on the right advocate more redistribution. This call seeks to explain with ESS data and other international values surveys (WVS, EVS, ISSP, etc.) new trends in predictors of attitudes towards redistribution. Particular emphasis is placed on cross-national studies using ESS data and other surveys together with time-varying national statistics. These statistics are primarily variables about the level of different forms economic inequality and parameters of the tax schedule (such as tax incidence, progressivity, tax rate levels, etc. Two special ESS modules about fairness and social justice views of ESS fielded in 2008 and 2016 are also of key importance for this call as they allow including several beliefs on the analysis of attitudes towards redistribution across time and country.

Chairs: Anja-Kristin Abendroth (Bielefeld University), Tanja van der Lippe (Utrecht University), Judith Treas (University of California Irvine) Information and communication technologies and the extension of digital infrastructures increasingly allow for digital social contacts in work and family life. Moreover, the global COVID-19 pandemic, with social distancing measures in place, increased the experiences with digital social contacts with colleagues and supervisors as well as family members. The implications for workplace flexibility in time, place and employment contract as well as family relationship quality are highly debated. An optimistic scenario foresees improved maintenance of existing relationships and improved flexible adaption of the work and family spheres. A more pessimistic perspective suggests that digital social contacts erode social capital, involve more precarious work contracts and/or result in a blurring of boundaries between work and family life fostering conflicts between the life domains. Empirical evidence, typically based on small-scale, single country studies, has yielded mixed findings, suggesting that social circumstances produce different effects. Opportunities-based arguments from research on the digital social divide point to differences in home and workplace access to digital communication and digital capacities from state investments in technology and skill development. Needs-based arguments refer to restrictions on face-to-face contact due to geographic distance, living arrangements, teleworking or long work hours--all differing between countries/regions depending on employment rates, welfare and labor protections, or family policies. Following trust-based arguments, the generalized trust, openness, and privacy policies of countries reflect privacy concerns limiting the use of digital communication and the digital exchange of support and appreciation. Influence-based arguments address individuals’ agency to limit the costs involved in digital communication, depending on country context and work or family cultures. The session on DSC invites contributions on the respective module on “Digital Social Contexts in Work and Family Life” in the ESS Round 10 on the following guiding questions: Does digital social contact in work and family life, its evaluation, and consequences differ between European countries and to what extent can these differences be explained by differences in digital infrastructures, national policies, demographic composition, and economic circumstances? Are there gender, parenthood, migration and class-specific patterns of digital social contacts in the spheres of work and family or their interfaces? How does digital social contact shape relationship quality, well-being, resources and demands in work, family and/or community as well as the intersection of these life spheres? Does digital social contact mitigate or reinforce gender or other social inequalities in the family or workforce?

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.

Round 10 of the European Social Survey (2021-2022) included a rotating module on European’s understandings and evaluations of democracy, largely replicating a previous module applied in Round 6 (2012- 2013). At the time, Europe was going through one of deepest economic and financial crises on record. However, the results and their analysis showed that, in spite of very large variations in how Europeans evaluated the performance of their democracies, the way they conceived “democracy” pointed to a widespread support for liberal and electoral institutions, even if complemented with equally important demands for economic equality and, to a lesser extent, for opportunities for a direct say in policymaking through referendums and initiatives. A lot has happened in the following decade, including a refugee crisis, referendums with unprecedented outcomes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, accompanied by an underlying expansion of EU intervention in domestic politics. At the same time, radical right-wing parties have seen their electoral fortunes improve all over the continent, as the use of populist rhetoric deepened and increased. In countries such as Hungary and Poland, full fledged populist governance and a rule-of-law crisis has taken hold, with both domestic and Europe-wide consequences. How have these developments affected Europeans’ views and evaluations of democracy? This session welcomes paper submissions addressing how views and evaluations of democracy in Europe can be mapped today and how they - and their underlying sources - have changed in this last decade, resorting to the rich and high-quality data of ESS’s Round 6 and 10. For Round 10, the original module was adapted to allow the measurement of conceptions and evaluations not only along the liberal democratic, direct democratic, and social democratic dimensions, but also along the dimension of populist democracy, a view that stresses vertical over horizontal accountability and a unrestrained responsiveness to a sovereign “people”. How has this enriched our knowledge about how Europeans understand “democracy” and evaluate the performance of their regimes? We welcome papers both on the substantive topic - conceptions and evaluations of democracy in Europe, their causes and implications - and on the methodological challenges involved in assessing them.

General population surveys are currently challenged by several societal developments, such as budget constraints and the respondents’ more active lifestyle, which leads to a lower contact success rate and higher costs in interviewer-based survey designs. At the same time, internet penetration rates are increasing fast and steadily. General population surveys are therefore pushed to innovating the design and several experiments on different designs for fielding a general population survey on the web have been fielded for more than a decade now. Survey methodologists study mode effects between interviewer-based and web/paper self-completion for over a decade. For example, Switzerland has fielded a comprehensive mixed-mode experiment using the European Social Survey (ESS) in 2012, a complex experiment on push-to-web designs using the European Values Study has been fielded in six countries in 2017 and during the pandemic, the ESS has been fielded as a self-completion web/paper survey in several countries in 2021. Given the change towards self-completion of the ESS in 2027, several experiments based on the ESS questionnaire have been fielded or are in the field. This session welcomes contributions that show the effects of a mode switch on results of general population surveys with a special focus on changes over time. This includes two types of research questions: effects of a mode-switch on time-series data as well as the changes in effects of a mode-switch over time. The first type of research questions includes how to demonstrate a mode effect in a time-series, how to correct for mode effects, how to visualize time-series with a mode change in-between and many more. The second type of research questions includes changes over time in under- or overrepresentation of specific groups in the population, changes in, or persistency of, mode effects regarding some variables or change in the share of paper vs. web participation, mobile participation etc. We welcome contributions based on ESS data but also based on any other general population survey that provides insights into the effect of switching from an interviewer-based to a self-completion survey relevant to the mode-switch of ESS foreseen in 2027 (e.g., including items and concepts used also in the ESS, such as trust, attitudes towards democracy, immigration, family, or welfare state).

Trust is widely considered the glue that binds society together, spanning scales from the individual to institutional to continental. Trust has many forms, including social and political, and can be universal as well as particular. The ESS data has amassed public opinion data on numerous measures of trust that allow examination of its composition, level, and distribution, along with its sources and consequences. Its broad temporal range combined with pan-European focus enables comparative testing of hypotheses about the reach of trust. For instance, is trust in strangers a universal moral value (Uslaner 2002, 2018), how likely are forms of trust to spill over to other domains given national, cultural, or temporal contexts, and how does particularized trust relate with and potentially translate to other types of trust, including more generalized forms (Reeskens and Hooghe 2008; Newton, Stolle, and Zmerli 2018). We invite papers on topics encompassing social and political trust that seek to describe its many realizations across the landscape as well as to compare them using innovative methods. We welcome contributions, for example, including trust in other individuals, organizations, institutions, and the social order over time and across places. Although multi-country studies are especially encouraged, single country studies with a comparative lens will also be considered. Examples include, for instance, normative and instrumental aspects of political trust such as institutional legitimacy, government performance (Levi and Stoker 2000), evaluations of how political institutions and actors fulfill their obligations to the social and political order, trust in others, trustworthiness of societies and social systems (Putnam 2000), and the relationship between diversity and social trust (Ziller 2015).

Value orientations are significant factors in understanding different attitudes, beliefs and behavior. ESS data provides an opportunity to test this notion across nations and over time. The construct of values is central to different fields in the social sciences and humanities (Sagiv, et al., 2017). Therefore, researchers from various disciplines can contribute to knowledge about this topic. Moreover, practitioners are interested in value orientations as understanding them helps to predict human behavior. With reference to Sagiv and Schwartz (2022), values serve as guiding principles in people’s lives. Finally, discussion about the mechanisms that link values to behavior is still ongoing. ESS data could meaningfully contribute to this discussion with the analysis of direct or indirect effects of human values to various patterns of attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors in Europe. So, we invite researchers from social sciences and humanities to propose their presentations to the section ‘’Value orientations in the study of lives across nations and over time‘‘ in ESS conference. We hope to provide answers to such questions as 1) if particular values and higher order value orientations are stable over time and across nations, how it could be explained; 2) what links between value orientations and attitudes, beliefs, behavior are the strongest; 3) what mechanisms could explain the links among values, beliefs, attitudes and behavior the best; 4) how value orientations contribute to the pursuit and fulfilment of sustainable development goals. Insights from the presentations will be a valuable input to research development and practical recommendations.

Since its inception in 2001, the European Social Survey aimed to ‘promote and practice the highest standards in cross-national research’. Its survey methodology has been widely recognised as excellent, with its firm emphasis on input harmonisation, the use of best practice, transparency, and effective central coordination. A key part of the ESS methodology has been the use of a single mode of data collection for the questionnaire, required to prevent different mode influencing survey responses in different ways, within and across the various countries taking part in the survey. The mode chosen by the founders of the ESS was face-to-face in-home interviewers, felt in 2002 to be the ‘gold standard’ as well as the only mode that could realistically be used in every participating ESS country.
In 2027 the ESS will no longer use face-to-face interviewing for its data collection instead offering web and paper self-completion questionnaires in all countries. Its 2025 round will compare the old and new modes in a split ballot design. This change, brought forward by the COVID-19 pandemic, has been driven by a number of factors, including: improved quality of self-completion data collection; declining quality of face-to-face data collection; and the near collapse of face-to-face interviewing capacity in many countries in Europe.
Fitzgerald will outline the new ESS self-completion data collection methodology, showing how the approach was developed and presenting data about the quality of the new mode compared to the face-to-face approach. The expected impact of the mode change on data quality and the survey time series will be discussed. The presentation will conclude on a positive note arguing that that the benefits of the new self-completion approach outweigh the negatives and provide a solid basis for high quality comparative ESS data collection for the future.
Following the presentation the ESS ERIC Director will host a roundtable discussion where survey methodologists and substantive cross-national scholars, discus the challenges and opportunities that this once in a generation methodological change brings to the infrastructure and its community of users.

New methods and data sources confirm that income and wealth inequalities have continued to increase over the last three decades. The level of perceived inequality influences the demand for economic redistribution, but it is not the only factor at work in the mental map of attitudes towards redistribution. Beliefs about the source of inequality are key to understanding the desired level of redistribution. People who believe that inequality arises from differences in effort will tend to demand less redistribution, while those who believe that inequality is due to differences in circumstances beyond the control of individuals will tend to demand more redistribution. Similarly, earlier studies regularly found that political ideology was an important predictor of attitudes towards redistribution, but recent evidence suggests that both those who consider themselves on the left and those who consider themselves on the right advocate more redistribution. This call seeks to explain with ESS data and other international values surveys (WVS, EVS, ISSP, etc.) new trends in predictors of attitudes towards redistribution. Particular emphasis is placed on cross-national studies using ESS data and other surveys together with time-varying national statistics. These statistics are primarily variables about the level of different forms economic inequality and parameters of the tax schedule (such as tax incidence, progressivity, tax rate levels, etc. Two special ESS modules about fairness and social justice views of ESS fielded in 2008 and 2016 are also of key importance for this call as they allow including several beliefs on the analysis of attitudes towards redistribution across time and country.

Chairs: Anja-Kristin Abendroth (Bielefeld University), Tanja van der Lippe (Utrecht University), Judith Treas (University of California Irvine) Information and communication technologies and the extension of digital infrastructures increasingly allow for digital social contacts in work and family life. Moreover, the global COVID-19 pandemic, with social distancing measures in place, increased the experiences with digital social contacts with colleagues and supervisors as well as family members. The implications for workplace flexibility in time, place and employment contract as well as family relationship quality are highly debated. An optimistic scenario foresees improved maintenance of existing relationships and improved flexible adaption of the work and family spheres. A more pessimistic perspective suggests that digital social contacts erode social capital, involve more precarious work contracts and/or result in a blurring of boundaries between work and family life fostering conflicts between the life domains. Empirical evidence, typically based on small-scale, single country studies, has yielded mixed findings, suggesting that social circumstances produce different effects. Opportunities-based arguments from research on the digital social divide point to differences in home and workplace access to digital communication and digital capacities from state investments in technology and skill development. Needs-based arguments refer to restrictions on face-to-face contact due to geographic distance, living arrangements, teleworking or long work hours--all differing between countries/regions depending on employment rates, welfare and labor protections, or family policies. Following trust-based arguments, the generalized trust, openness, and privacy policies of countries reflect privacy concerns limiting the use of digital communication and the digital exchange of support and appreciation. Influence-based arguments address individuals’ agency to limit the costs involved in digital communication, depending on country context and work or family cultures. The session on DSC invites contributions on the respective module on “Digital Social Contexts in Work and Family Life” in the ESS Round 10 on the following guiding questions: Does digital social contact in work and family life, its evaluation, and consequences differ between European countries and to what extent can these differences be explained by differences in digital infrastructures, national policies, demographic composition, and economic circumstances? Are there gender, parenthood, migration and class-specific patterns of digital social contacts in the spheres of work and family or their interfaces? How does digital social contact shape relationship quality, well-being, resources and demands in work, family and/or community as well as the intersection of these life spheres? Does digital social contact mitigate or reinforce gender or other social inequalities in the family or workforce?

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.

Since its inception, the South European Network (SEN), composed by Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, has aimed to identify shared issues and collaborative solutions. In this session, we invite researchers from the SEN countries and beyond, to showcase their work, addressing the profound societal challenges Europe is confronting. Against the backdrop of these challenges, scholars who have conducted research utilizing ESS data are invited to address topics including but not limited to climate change, democracy, immigration, digitalization, pandemic-related concerns, gender dynamics, rising living costs, demographic aging, and escalating health disparities. This session presents a valuable opportunity to delve into the similarities, differences, and potential unique profiles of the SEN countries, in comparison to other ESS participating countries. Papers may employ a methodological or substantive approach and focus on longitudinal or single-round ESS data.

Round 10 of the European Social Survey (2021-2022) included a rotating module on European’s understandings and evaluations of democracy, largely replicating a previous module applied in Round 6 (2012- 2013). At the time, Europe was going through one of deepest economic and financial crises on record. However, the results and their analysis showed that, in spite of very large variations in how Europeans evaluated the performance of their democracies, the way they conceived “democracy” pointed to a widespread support for liberal and electoral institutions, even if complemented with equally important demands for economic equality and, to a lesser extent, for opportunities for a direct say in policymaking through referendums and initiatives. A lot has happened in the following decade, including a refugee crisis, referendums with unprecedented outcomes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, accompanied by an underlying expansion of EU intervention in domestic politics. At the same time, radical right-wing parties have seen their electoral fortunes improve all over the continent, as the use of populist rhetoric deepened and increased. In countries such as Hungary and Poland, full fledged populist governance and a rule-of-law crisis has taken hold, with both domestic and Europe-wide consequences. How have these developments affected Europeans’ views and evaluations of democracy? This session welcomes paper submissions addressing how views and evaluations of democracy in Europe can be mapped today and how they - and their underlying sources - have changed in this last decade, resorting to the rich and high-quality data of ESS’s Round 6 and 10. For Round 10, the original module was adapted to allow the measurement of conceptions and evaluations not only along the liberal democratic, direct democratic, and social democratic dimensions, but also along the dimension of populist democracy, a view that stresses vertical over horizontal accountability and a unrestrained responsiveness to a sovereign “people”. How has this enriched our knowledge about how Europeans understand “democracy” and evaluate the performance of their regimes? We welcome papers both on the substantive topic - conceptions and evaluations of democracy in Europe, their causes and implications - and on the methodological challenges involved in assessing them.

General population surveys are currently challenged by several societal developments, such as budget constraints and the respondents’ more active lifestyle, which leads to a lower contact success rate and higher costs in interviewer-based survey designs. At the same time, internet penetration rates are increasing fast and steadily. General population surveys are therefore pushed to innovating the design and several experiments on different designs for fielding a general population survey on the web have been fielded for more than a decade now. Survey methodologists study mode effects between interviewer-based and web/paper self-completion for over a decade. For example, Switzerland has fielded a comprehensive mixed-mode experiment using the European Social Survey (ESS) in 2012, a complex experiment on push-to-web designs using the European Values Study has been fielded in six countries in 2017 and during the pandemic, the ESS has been fielded as a self-completion web/paper survey in several countries in 2021. Given the change towards self-completion of the ESS in 2027, several experiments based on the ESS questionnaire have been fielded or are in the field. This session welcomes contributions that show the effects of a mode switch on results of general population surveys with a special focus on changes over time. This includes two types of research questions: effects of a mode-switch on time-series data as well as the changes in effects of a mode-switch over time. The first type of research questions includes how to demonstrate a mode effect in a time-series, how to correct for mode effects, how to visualize time-series with a mode change in-between and many more. The second type of research questions includes changes over time in under- or overrepresentation of specific groups in the population, changes in, or persistency of, mode effects regarding some variables or change in the share of paper vs. web participation, mobile participation etc. We welcome contributions based on ESS data but also based on any other general population survey that provides insights into the effect of switching from an interviewer-based to a self-completion survey relevant to the mode-switch of ESS foreseen in 2027 (e.g., including items and concepts used also in the ESS, such as trust, attitudes towards democracy, immigration, family, or welfare state).

Trust is widely considered the glue that binds society together, spanning scales from the individual to institutional to continental. Trust has many forms, including social and political, and can be universal as well as particular. The ESS data has amassed public opinion data on numerous measures of trust that allow examination of its composition, level, and distribution, along with its sources and consequences. Its broad temporal range combined with pan-European focus enables comparative testing of hypotheses about the reach of trust. For instance, is trust in strangers a universal moral value (Uslaner 2002, 2018), how likely are forms of trust to spill over to other domains given national, cultural, or temporal contexts, and how does particularized trust relate with and potentially translate to other types of trust, including more generalized forms (Reeskens and Hooghe 2008; Newton, Stolle, and Zmerli 2018). We invite papers on topics encompassing social and political trust that seek to describe its many realizations across the landscape as well as to compare them using innovative methods. We welcome contributions, for example, including trust in other individuals, organizations, institutions, and the social order over time and across places. Although multi-country studies are especially encouraged, single country studies with a comparative lens will also be considered. Examples include, for instance, normative and instrumental aspects of political trust such as institutional legitimacy, government performance (Levi and Stoker 2000), evaluations of how political institutions and actors fulfill their obligations to the social and political order, trust in others, trustworthiness of societies and social systems (Putnam 2000), and the relationship between diversity and social trust (Ziller 2015).

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.

How (un)fair is Europe? Jule Adriaans (2024 Jowell-Kaase Early Career Researcher, Bielefeld University) Social inequalities are ubiquitous in European societies. They are frequently at the center of public debate and social science research. Both in academic and non-academic discourse, the need to address social inequality is often motivated by the assumption that large inequalities harm societies by reducing their members' well-being and threatening social cohesion. However, empirical findings show that lay people are neither particularly good at assessing the extent of inequality nor do they prefer strict equality. Instead, it seems that people strive for justice - demanding equal treatment as well the consideration of individual contributions and needs - and react negatively to injustice. Against this backdrop, I will use comparative survey data - with a particular focus on ESS Round 9 data - to take stock of the state of justice and fairness in Europe, asking: How unfair is Europe? And how do Europeans respond to the unfairness they identify?

ESS data in Portugal has been collected since 2002, which makes it one of the most reliable and quality sources of data on values and attitudes regarding a broad variety of social issues. With this session we would like to invite Portuguese researchers to reflect on the 20 years of ESS and to present their own work, whether on a country specific level as in a cross-country level analysis. With this session we want also to pay tribute to João Ferreira de Almeida, member of the ESS Scientific Advisory Board (2002-2017), deceased in 2022, for his leading and decisive role on the participation of Portugal in the ESS since the beginning of the project.

The analysis of social inequality is a perennial topic in sociological research. In particular, it is attracting renewed interest in European countries against the backdrop of the recent inflation crisis. We want to know what is the state of social inequality in European countries. In this session we will invite and discuss recent papers on educational inequality, social mobility and homogamy based on the European Social Survey. We are particularly interested in the following questions: How has educational expansion shaped educational inequalities? How do educational inequalities differ by institutional background (educational institutions or welfare systems)? What analyses are available on the use of unidimensional or multidimensional approaches to operationalize social origin with the European Social Survey? Do countries show similar or different patterns in absolute and relative mobility rates? How has homogamy changed across European countries?

Since the last decade of the 20th century, as digital technologies began to spread, research on inequalities, social impacts and effects of the use of these technologies began to be developed. This has highlighted the great importance of research on digital transformation, which is concerned with the economic and social effects of integrating digital technologies into people's lives. The expansion these technologies has unevenly across society. The term digital divide was coined as early as the 1990s, to describe inequalities referred to the access and uptake of digital technologies. Differences in access to digital technologies is what was called the first digital divide, which later on, gave rise to other types of divides, such as the divide on digital skills. Likewise, digital technologies play a crucial role in numerous aspects of daily life, such as education, communication, leisure, or work. As a result, is of crucial importance to understand how these technologies are affecting individuals’ well-being given that the ultimate effect of the integration of technologies in all aspects of our lives would be in our well-being. At the same time, our society is also undergoing a green transition, and social concern about climate change is a central issue. In this sense, it is of particular interest to understand how this green transition is related to the digital transition and, at the same time, how individuals' environmental perceptions and concerns affect their levels of well-being. In this framework, this session welcomes proposals using the ESS and related to one of the following two research topics: (1) Digital inequalities and individuals (2) Digital transition and environmental perceptions (3) Environmental perceptions and well-being. Of particular interest for this session are proposals of cross-country analyses using the ESS Round 10 rotating module on "Digital social contact in work and family life", investigating the causes of inequalities in digital skills and their relationship to well-being. Also, proposals that try to shed light on how the use of digital technologies such as the internet affect people's well-being, using variables from the Media and social trust and Subjective well-being categories. Finally, proposals analyzing how people's environmental perceptions are related to and affect the digital transition and individuals' well-being, using variables on environmental perceptions, such as those included in Rounds 10 and 8. Proposals focusing on topics other than the above, but related to the digital transition, well-being or environmental perceptions, are also welcome.

Round 10 of the European Social Survey (2021-2022) included a rotating module on European’s understandings and evaluations of democracy, largely replicating a previous module applied in Round 6 (2012- 2013). At the time, Europe was going through one of deepest economic and financial crises on record. However, the results and their analysis showed that, in spite of very large variations in how Europeans evaluated the performance of their democracies, the way they conceived “democracy” pointed to a widespread support for liberal and electoral institutions, even if complemented with equally important demands for economic equality and, to a lesser extent, for opportunities for a direct say in policymaking through referendums and initiatives. A lot has happened in the following decade, including a refugee crisis, referendums with unprecedented outcomes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, accompanied by an underlying expansion of EU intervention in domestic politics. At the same time, radical right-wing parties have seen their electoral fortunes improve all over the continent, as the use of populist rhetoric deepened and increased. In countries such as Hungary and Poland, full fledged populist governance and a rule-of-law crisis has taken hold, with both domestic and Europe-wide consequences. How have these developments affected Europeans’ views and evaluations of democracy? This session welcomes paper submissions addressing how views and evaluations of democracy in Europe can be mapped today and how they - and their underlying sources - have changed in this last decade, resorting to the rich and high-quality data of ESS’s Round 6 and 10. For Round 10, the original module was adapted to allow the measurement of conceptions and evaluations not only along the liberal democratic, direct democratic, and social democratic dimensions, but also along the dimension of populist democracy, a view that stresses vertical over horizontal accountability and a unrestrained responsiveness to a sovereign “people”. How has this enriched our knowledge about how Europeans understand “democracy” and evaluate the performance of their regimes? We welcome papers both on the substantive topic - conceptions and evaluations of democracy in Europe, their causes and implications - and on the methodological challenges involved in assessing them.

Because of technological, demographic, cultural, and global processes, work is undergoing transformations in forms and social meanings. There has been an increasing internal segmentation within the labor market, particularly in terms of differential access to contractual stability and, consequently, varying access to income continuity. Moreover, work not always seems able to guarantee protection from the risk of poverty (i.e poor work). In addition, technological innovations and processes of educational expansion are reshaping the distribution and the very content of professions. The increasing internal segmentation of the labor market and discontinuity in job careers are factors that contribute to individuals within the same occupational groups having varying social and economic conditions. Therefore, an increase in social fragmentation and a weakening of the pivotal role of work in the construction of social and individual identity is being under discussion. The European Social Survey (ESS) stands as an invaluable database for empirically testing hypotheses concerning the decline of the centrality of work in shaping individuals' values, attitudes, and beliefs. Firstly, the ESS boasts an extensive repository of survey data with an extended temporal coverage that enables researchers to trace societal changes and trends over time. Secondly, the ESS encompasses a substantial number of countries allowing for comparative analyses. The inclusion of various cultural, economic, and political contexts enhances the robustness of findings and enables researchers to identify general patterns, including the role of different institutional arrangements. Consequently, the ESS's combination of longitudinal and cross-national perspectives makes it as the quintessential database for empirically scrutinizing hypotheses pertaining to the centrality of work in affecting individuals' attitudes and beliefs about societal issues such as, e.g. human values, social exclusion, welfare state, social inequality social trust and trust in institutions, authoritarianism. The session aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the evolving relationship between work and values and attitudes over time and across different countries by inviting scholars to exploit the great potential of the knowledge basis provided by ESS data. The session especially welcomes contributions: Adopting a comparative and/or longitudinal perspective. Considering job position in the labor market encompassing its various aspects: employment form, status, and sector, occupation. Merging ESS data with other datasets allowing multilevel analysis also including the impact of institutional arrangement. that consider the contribution of institutional arrangement.

In the past few years, large-scale surveys such as the ESS have faced issues with declining response rates and escalating costs associated with conducting surveys (Brick and Williams, 2013; de Leeuw, Hox and Luiten, 2018). In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed researchers further to experiment with other methods. As a result, many of these projects (e.g., the EVS or the GSS) have started introducing self-administered modes and using a mixed-mode design as an alternative to traditional face-to-face data collections. Particularly, push-to-web approaches (Dillman, 2017) have so far been the most promising. While the primary method of the ESS remains face-to-face, the ESS has a clear objective to transition to a mixed-mode setting in the upcoming period. The use of multiple modes may come with benefits (lower costs, increase in response rates, decrease in certain types of sample biases), but can be a source of measurement error at the same time. Mode effects can impact time trends or introduce additional measurement error in county-level comparisons. Thus, understanding the consequences of mode shifts and finding optimal mixed-mode designs are critical to the ESS. In this session, we invite contributions which provide insight into the impact of survey mode on measurement errors or present findings related to mixed-mode design choices and questionnaire design.

The European Social Survey provides a unique opportunity to study prejudice and perceived discrimination against social minorities across time and varying societal contexts. Its extensive coverage of a range of topics and populations enables the exploration of innovative research questions, contrasting socio-cultural realities and individual perceptions of minority groups. How are the attitudes of the majority reflected in the minorities' experiences and perceptions of discrimination? How does the temporal and regional context interfere in this association? These types of multi-level and cross-level relations offer crucial insights into psychosocial processes and intergroup relations. Furthermore, with its large and representative samples, the ESS facilitates the adoption of intersectionality perspectives, illuminating the unique experiences and various outcomes among a large variety of granular minority groups. It helps addressing the issue of multiple jeopardies. Simultaneously, there has been a significant change over the past two decades concerning perceived discrimination. Activist movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter have heightened individual sensitivities to issues of discrimination. Additionally, there has been a transformation in societal norms related to reporting experiences of discrimination in the social media. The question remains as to how these shifts are reflected in the population and to what extent is varies across minority groups and societal contexts. Therefore, this session invites papers focusing on the perceived discrimination of minority groups and potential outcomes, considering contextual factors and/or employing an intersectionality approach. We also welcome submissions that contribute methodologically by critically examining how perceived discrimination and prejudice are operationalized in the ESS. This includes considering the multilevel interplay between time period, societal context, and individual factors, or by addressing intersectionality.

Environmental issues are not only ecological but also social and cultural impacts. To address them effectively, we need to understand how human societies interact with the environment. This session highlights the importance of social science in environmental research and vice versa and invites contributions that explore how interdisciplinary collaboration can lead to innovative and sustainable solutions. We welcome researchers from various disciplines who have used data from the European Social Survey for interdisciplinary research related to environmental issues.

ESS data in Portugal has been collected since 2002, which makes it one of the most reliable and quality sources of data on values and attitudes regarding a broad variety of social issues. With this session we would like to invite Portuguese researchers to reflect on the 20 years of ESS and to present their own work, whether on a country specific level as in a cross-country level analysis. With this session we want also to pay tribute to João Ferreira de Almeida, member of the ESS Scientific Advisory Board (2002-2017), deceased in 2022, for his leading and decisive role on the participation of Portugal in the ESS since the beginning of the project.

The population of Europe and other OECD countries is aging rapidly, which means that exploring various challenges faced by retirees is crucial for developing both robust theoretical models as well as effective policies. Different types of pension systems may expose older individuals to increased risk of poverty. Moreover, the transition to retirement and aging are linked to various stressors, including changes in living conditions, family forms, and access to social networks. The aim of this session is to discuss the research on various facets of life after retirement. We focus on issues related to: 1. Pension systems and old-age poverty; 2. Family forms and financial and psychological well-being of the retirees; 3. Trust and old-age social exclusion; 4. Unionization of retired workers.

Environmental issues are not only ecological but also social and cultural impacts. To address them effectively, we need to understand how human societies interact with the environment. This session highlights the importance of social science in environmental research and vice versa and invites contributions that explore how interdisciplinary collaboration can lead to innovative and sustainable solutions. We welcome researchers from various disciplines who have used data from the European Social Survey for interdisciplinary research related to environmental issues.

Welfare state policies have proven to be an important buffer to the adverse effects of economic crisis, as we have observed during the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Understanding how citizens perceive and interact with the welfare state, especially in times of crisis, is therefore of paramount importance. Recent reviews (van Oorschot, Laenen, Roosma & Meuleman, 2022; Roosma & Laenen, 2023) demonstrate how the literature on welfare state attitudes has - in large part by virtue of the welfare attitudes modules of the European Social Survey - burgeoned over the past few decades. While this has vastly improved our understanding of Europeans’ welfare attitudes, important knowledge gaps remain. These include, most notably, (1) expanding the search for the determinants of welfare attitudes in new directions, for example by analyzing the impact of knowledge and lived experience, (2) exploring attitudes towards new types of welfare policy, like eco-social policies, Social Europe and universal basic income, (3) adopting a more longitudinal perspective on how welfare attitudes evolve over time in different contexts in both the short and the long term, and (4) investigating the consequences of welfare attitudes, for example on actual welfare policies and discourses. This session invites papers that contribute to improving our understanding of welfare attitudes and their causes and consequences, using data from the European Social Survey and/or the CROss-National Online Survey (CRONOS) Panel.

This session seeks answers to the question how the acceptance of gay couples has changed in different countries in Europe over the last two decades. The European Social Survey (ESS) may provide good answers to this question because it included a core item measuring homophobia from the very beginning: “Gay men and lesbians should be free to live their own life as they wish”. This was complemented in 2016 by two additional items (“If a close family member was a gay man or a lesbian, I would feel ashamed”; “Gay male and lesbian couples should have the same rights to adopt children as straight couples”), which allow us to measure the acceptance of lesbians, gays, and their families in several dimensions. The nature of the ESS database makes it suitable for both temporal and cross-country comparisons. Cross-country comparisons are very important in this field, since acceptance of same-sex couples, family members and of adoption by same-sex couples vary widely across Europe. As several studies have pointed out, there is almost a demarcation line across Europe between different attitudes towards gay people. In addition, in some Eastern and Eastern Central European countries, “patriotic pronatalism” is on the rise. This specific form of pronatalism encourages childbearing only within a certain framework: a favoured subset of heterosexual relationships. This phenomenon could further reinforce divisions in terms of acceptance and rejection of same-sex families in Europe. In this session, in addition to comparative research, we also welcome research that analyses attitudes towards same-sex couples from a new perspective: for example, how negative attitudes towards voluntary childlessness might be associated with adoption by same-sex couples, or what factors might link homophobia to anti-immigration attitudes. Moreover, presentations of methodological applications regarding how to measure homophobia by comparing it via different international databases are also welcome.

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 inter-generational relations, what drives volunteers, work and family life and modern cohabitation practices.