European Social Survey: 250,000 registered users worldwide - more than 5,000 in Slovenia!

The European Social Survey (ESS) is a pan-European research infrastructure providing freely accessible data to academics, policy makers, civil society and the wider public. The ESS is an academically based international survey that has been conducted across Europe since its inception in 2001. For the past 20 years, members of the Public Opinion and Mass Communication Research Centre - National Coordinator Senior Research Associate Dr Slavko Kurdija  and colleagues Msc. Tina Vovk, Msc. Živa Broder and Rebeka Falle Zorman are part of the programme. 

Every two years, nationally representative samples are interviewed in more than 30 countries on a wide range of topical issues. The ESS has been designed primarily as a comparative time series to monitor attitudes and values in Europe. It consists of a core questionnaire with questions repeated since 2002. In addition, two specific thematic modules are selected in each wave of the survey, which are designed by a distinguished international group of experts in the field covered by the module.

The ESS always includes questions on education, employment, financial situation, ethnic origin and other socio-demographic data, including household composition and basic information on household members. The core part of the questionnaire covers topics such as: climate change, feelings of security, satisfaction with the functioning of the different social subsystems (justice, politics, economy, health, education, etc.), attitudes towards immigration, subjective and social well-being, trust in institutions, use of the media and the internet, national and European identity, perceptions of discrimination, social exclusion, and a range of questions related to values.

In 2024, the ESS was awarded the prestigious Kohli Foundation Prize for Sociology in the field of Infrastructure, having been recognised as an outstanding infrastructure project for sociology and related fields. As part of the ESS programme, our faculty members were among the recipients of the award. 

Photo: iser.essex.ac.uk