A new version of the ESS6 integrated file (edition 2.6) was published on 24 November 2023.

The new release is due to some corrections in the religion variables for Cyprus and the education variables for Norway.

For more information, see version information for the ESS6 integrated file on the ESS Data Portal. 

The ESS Data and Documentation section has been updated with a cumulative data file for the first nine rounds of the ESS. The cumulative data are available from the ESS Cumulative Data Wizard, where users can customise their own subsets of data in different formats. The ESS Cumulative Data Wizard gives access to cumulative data from countries that have been included in the integrated ESS files in two or more rounds. All variables that have been asked in more than one round are included in the cumulative data file.

All rounds of the ESS have been updated in a major upgrade of the ESS data and documentation 01.12.18. For an overview of the changes in variables and country data, see version notes for ESS1, ESS2, ESS3, ESS4, ESS5, ESS6, ESS7 and ESS8 respectively.

The ESS Cumulative Data Wizard, where users can customise their own subsets of data in different formats, will be updated with all eight rounds of the ESS within the next two weeks.

The Multilevel Data resource was updated on the 26th of June 2017.

In this update, survey data from ESS7 was added to the resource, alongside the already published data from ESS4, ESS5 and ESS6. The existing categories of macro data (demography, economy, education, health, crime and political institutions) were expanded with new variables and more recent data to match the ESS round 7 survey data. In addition contextual data concerning immigration added to complement the ESS7 rotating module on that topic.

In addition the ESS4, ESS5 and ESS6 individual level data have been updated to the newest editions available.

The ESS Data and Documentation section has been updated with a cumulative data file for the first seven rounds of the ESS. The cumulative data are available from the ESS Cumulative Data Wizard, where users can customise their own subsets of data in different formats. The ESS Cumulative Data Wizard gives access to cumulative data from countries that have been included in the integrated ESS files in two or more rounds. All variables that have been asked in more than one round are included in the cumulative data file.

All rounds of the ESS have been updated in a major upgrade of the ESS data and documentation 01.12.16. For an overview of the changes in variables and country data, see version notes for ESS1, ESS2, ESS3, ESS4, ESS5, ESS6 and ESS7 respectively.

The ESS Cumulative Data Wizard, where users can customise their own subsets of data in different formats, will be updated with all seven rounds of the ESS within the next ten days.

Edition 2.2 of the ESS6 data and documentation was released on 9 March 2016.

Edition 2.2 includes corrected post-stratification weights (PSPWGHT) as well as updated country data for Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Iceland, Israel, Italy and Poland. Changes from edition 2.1 to 2.2 are described in more detail in the ESS6 Version notes.

The Cumulative Data Wizard and the Multilevel Data have also been updated with version 2.2 of the ESS6 data.

ESS6 edition 2.2 data and the updated ESS6 - 2012 Documentation Report (edition 2.2), are available from the data download pages.

An error has been detected in the ESS Round 6 post-stratification weights (PSWEIGHT) in the ESS data available on the Data and Documentation pages.

At the current time, we would advise you not to use the current Round 6 post-stratification weights. Initial assessments of the impact of this problem on univariate estimates of ESS substantive variables have shown they are small in most cases, and we can therefore expect the impact on multivariate models to be quite small. However, the revised post-stratification weights will be needed to fully assess this. The design (DWEIGHT) and population weights (PWEIGHT) can continue to be used.

The ESS post-stratification weights are constructed using country information on age-group, gender, education, and region, which is obtained from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The problem relates to a misinterpretation of the population age distribution provided by LFS, which leads to a small overrepresentation of respondents aged 55+ in the ESS sample when the post-stratification weights are used. Therefore, the post-stratification weights (variable PSPWGHT) for Round 6 need to be revised and will become available by early April 2016. We will inform all our data users once the revised post-stratification weights are available for download from our website.

We would like to sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience.

The industry variable NACER2 (F31) for Israel in ESS6-2012 is incorrectly coded. Due to an error when recoding from 3 to 2 digits, all respondents have incorrect values on this variable in all editions of ESS6 data up to and including edition 2.1.

A data file containing the corrected variable is available for download on the ESS6 - 2012 Data Download page. The variable will be corrected in future updates of the integrated ESS6 data file.

Edition 4.0 of the ESS6 Media claims data was published on the 21st of May 2015.

In the fourth edition, media claims from Denmark were added to a data set already including claims for Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kosovo, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. The new version also contains a minor update of the Polish data.

Data and documentation are accessible from the Methodology section and the ESS6 download page.