About ESS EduNet
Link
If you wish to include a link to ESS EduNet in materials or in your website, please use the following: http://essedunet.nsd.uib.no
Copyright and restrictions
The texts and data available from ESS EduNet are available without restrictions, for not-for-profit purposes. The producers (NSD and the ESS), the authors and the dataproducer should be cited.
Contact
We prefer any queries regarding ESS EduNet to be sent by e-mail.
- NSD
- Harald Hårfagres gate 29
- 5007 BERGEN
- NORWAY
- Phone +47 55 58 21 17
- Fax +47 55 58 96 50
- essedunet@nsd.uib.no
The European Social Survey Education Net
To facilitate and enrich access to and usage of survey data, the ESS-project was granted seed funding to create an Internet-based analysis-training programme. This led to the development of the ESS EduNet.
ESS EduNet is designed to meet the many requests we have had to make it easier and more efficient for lecturers to use ESS data in their teaching. Instructions and hands-on examples make it managable even for inexperienced users to independently browse through and utilise ESS data.
The pedagogical idea is to create an interactive learning environment that combines the elements of social science to an integrated whole: theory, data and methodology. Typically, a topic contains some theoretical background on an important social science problem. This presentation is illustrated by results found by analysing the ESS data. Each topic also contains exercises to be solved either online or after data has been downloaded. Detailed instructions, both regarding which buttons to push and regarding the interpretation of the results, are prepared for each exercise.
In our view, ESS EduNet has three important advantages:
- Closeness to data. Data and theory are interwoven. Inside ESS EduNet, data is never more than a few mouseclicks away. This closeness to data stimulates creativity: "How is the situation in this country compared to that country...?", "What if we choose another variable...?".
- Easy to use. The instructions, the examples and the software for online statistical analysis make it very easy to perform statistical analyses. This easyness is important in the process of demystifying statistical data analysis for users with phobia for numbers.
- Research practise. ESS EduNet could be described as a social science research simulator. In safe suroundings the users get important practise in the different steps in social research: use theory to generate hypothesises, manipulate data, analyse data and interpret results.
ESS EduNet is developed at Norwegian Social Science Data Services.
About The European Social Survey
The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted every two years across Europe since 2001. It is directed by Rory Fitzgerald (City University London). The survey measures the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of diverse populations in more than thirty nations. The main aims of the ESS are:
- to chart stability and change in social structure, conditions and attitudes in Europe and to interpret how Europe’s social, political and moral fabric is changing,
- to achieve and spread higher standards of rigour in cross-national research in the social sciences, including for example, questionnaire design and pre-testing, sampling, data collection, reduction of bias and the reliability of questions
- to introduce soundly-based indicators of national progress, based on citizens’ perceptions and judgements of key aspects of their societies,
- to undertake and facilitate the training of European social researchers in comparative quantitative measurement and analysis
- to improve the visibility and outreach of data on social change among academics, policy makers and the wider public
Funding for the ESS has been received from the European Commission's Framework programmes, from the European Science Foundation, and from national funding councils in participating countries. In January 2013 the ESS submitted its second stage application to become a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). Successful completion of stage two of the application will ensure long-term funding for future rounds of the ESS.
For further information about the ESS, please go to the ESS Home Site.