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.
The European Social Survey
The ESS is a biennial multi-country survey covering over 30 nations. The first round was fielded in 2002/2003, the second in 2004/2005, the third in 2006/2007, the fourth in 2008/2009 and the fifth in 2010/2011.
The project has been funded through the European Commission's Framework Programmes, the European Science Foundation and national funding bodies in each country. The project is directed by a Core Scientific Team led by Rory Fitzgerald from the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys at City University London, UK.
The questionnaire includes two main sections, each consisting of approximately 120 items; a 'core' module which will remain relatively constant from round to round, plus two or more 'rotating' modules, repeated at intervals. The core module aims to monitor change and continuity in a wide range of social variables, including media use, social and public trust; political interest and participation; socio-political orientations, governance and efficacy; moral, political and social values; social exclusion, national, ethnic and religious allegiances; well-being, health and security; demographics and socio-economics.
In addition, a supplementary questionnaire is presented to respondents at the end of the main interview. The first part of this questionnaire is a human values scale (part of the core), while the second is devoted to measures to help evaluate the reliability and validity of items in the main questionnaire.
For further information about the ESS, please go to the ESS Home Site.
In the ESS Data Web Site you will find the complete datasets from all rounds Go to ESS Data Web Site.