The European Social Survey (ESS) is an international, comparative survey of social and political values and attitudes, which was launched in 2002 and has recently completed the 10th round of data collection. The survey measures the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of diverse populations in more than thirty nations. ESS aims to chart stability and change to allow the interpretation on how Europe’s social, political and moral fabric is changing and introduce soundly based indicators of national progress. The data collection is performed every two years through face-to-face interviews with cross-sectional samples of respondents. The ESS data is available free of charge for non-commercial use and can be downloaded from the ESS Data Portal.
In 2013, ESS was given the status of a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) and in 2016 it was named the landmark of the European Strategy Forum of Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).
The ERIC (ESS ERIC) -in the frame of the EU-funded ESS-SUSTAIN-2 project- contracted EFIS Centre to conduct a scoping study to understand the visibility, accessibility and reachability of ESS data at national and international policy levels. This study aims explore more in depth the policy impact derived from the usage of the ESS data and distil lessons learned for designing more effective ESS interactions with policy audiences in the future.
