Questions selected for new online panel

11/11/20

Following an open call for proposals, question module proposals have now been selected for inclusion in our new online web panel, due to be fielded in 12 countries, beginning in 2021.

Applications were invited for up to 15 questions to be fielded in one of the first two waves, or 20 questions to be included across several waves.

Following the call, the European Social Survey can reveal that wave 1 will include questions on climate policies, proposed by a team led by Malcolm Fairbrother (Umeå University).

It will include some questions that were fielded in our face-to-face Round 8 (2016/17) survey on taxes on fossil fuels, subsidies for renewable energy and bans on inefficient appliances.

Further questions will consider new policy developments, such as a tax on non-recycled plastic waste and public funding for a transition into more environmentally friendly jobs.

Wave 1 will also include questions on vaccinations against COVID-19 (Carsten Schröder, Free University Berlin), a module that will gather opinions on voluntary and mandatory vaccinations. These questions will be repeated in wave 5.

Two further sets of questions will be included in the first wave: drivers of institutional trustworthiness (Santiago González, OECD), and perceptions of surveys (Bella Struminskaya, Utrecht University).

The former will investigate the OECD trust framework, covering the ability of governments to deliver high quality standards as well as the drivers and principles that inform and guide government action. These questions will be repeated in wave 4.

The latter will include the Survey Attitude Scale: nine standardised questions that have been successfully implemented in several online panels in Germany and the Netherlands. Some of these items will be repeated in wave 5.

Wave 2 will include items on attitudes towards Social Europe (Sharon Baute, University of Amsterdam) that will assess respondents’ feelings towards welfare and redistribution.

Questions on income generation and support for redistribution of wealth will also be included, following a successful application led by Panu Poutvaara, University of Munich.

A module on longitudinal financial wellbeing (Leonore Riitsalu, University of Tartu) will be fielded in wave 2, with identical questions repeated in wave 5.

Public attitudes toward memory policies - such as commemorative ceremonies, memorials, or public speeches - will also be included in wave 2 (Sarah Gensburger, French National Center for Scientific Research).

The CROss-National Online Survey-2 (CRONOS-2) panel is a developmental activity aiming to build expertise in cross-national online data collection.

CRONOS-2 will be fielded amongst respondents in Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The data from the panel will be linked to data from our main questionnaire at the individual level and will be released to the entire scientific community without any privileged access.

An open call for question proposals to be included in waves 4 and 5 of the web panel will be published next year.

The web panel is funded by the European Commission as part of the Horizon 2020 project, ESS-SUSTAIN-2 (grant agreement number 871063).