European Social Survey (ESS)
The European Social Survey is a biennial multi-country survey coördinated by the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys, City University (London) in partnership with: NSD (Norway); SCP (Netherlands); The University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and GESIS (Germany).
Funding for PhD candidates to visit ESS Survey Competence Centres was announced in January 2012 .
ESS questionnaires include consist of approximately 120 items. The survey consists of a 'core' module and two or more 'rotating' modules, repeated at intervals.
The core module aims to monitor change and continuity in a wide range of social variables including: media use, social and public trust; political interest and participation; socio-political orientations, governance and efficacy; moral, political and social values; social exclusion, national, ethnic and religious allegiances; well-being, health and security; demographics and socio-economics.
An additional, supplementary questionnaire is presented to respondents at the end of the main interview. The first part of the questionnaire is a human values scale (part of the core), while the second part is devoted to measures to evaluate the reliability and validity of items in the main questionnaire.
The following ESS waves are available:
ESS4 2010
ESS3 2006
ESS2 2004
ESS1 2002
The ESS data homepage provides full details about methodology and regular news about the survey.
The Survey documentation page provides details about variables.
Funding for PhD candidates to visit ESS Survey Competence Centres was announced in January 2012 .
How to access data
To access European Social Survey data, it is necessary to register as an ESS user by completing this online form .
More European, EU and Eurozone statistical data sources are described on this Library page .
Contact: Thomas Bourke at econlibrary@eui.eu