Le cycle de conférence du GREC vous invite à suivre la présentation de Mattias Wahlström de l’Université de Gothenburg intitulée:

Climate protesters and their motives for participating: Results from an international survey of participants in Fridays for Future climate strikes.

Abstract:

The #FridaysForFuture (FFF) climate protests mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe on 15 March 2019. Media coverage of these protests and high-level national and international political meetings involving the movement’s icon, Greta Thunberg, illustrate a level of global attention that no previous youth movement has ever received. A team of social scientists from universities across Europe organized a survey of the March global FFF strike event in 13 cities. Results from this survey will be presented and analysed with a focus on variations in participant motives and the meanings participants assign to the protest.

Géopolis Room 2238, 16h

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Le Groupe de Recherche sur les Élections et la Citoyenneté Politique (GREC) constitue une unité de recherche de l’IEP. Il regroupe des chercheuses et chercheurs — à l’IEP mais également au sein d’autres institutions — s’intéressant aux élections et votations, aux partis politiques, aux mouvements sociaux ou à la politique contestataire, et plus globalement aux questions de citoyenneté politique.

Les objectifs de ce centre de recherche sont multiples. Premièrement, le GREC sert de lieu d’échange intellectuel et de discussion pour les chercheurs et docto­rants de l’IEP et d’autres institutions travaillant dans les domaines des élections et des votations, des mouvements sociaux, de l’activisme et de la citoyenneté politique. A ce titre, il favorise les contacts et collaborations avec l’extérieur, notamment en invitant des conférenciers d’autres universités. Deuxièmement, le GREC entend renforcer la visibilité des recherches qui se font dans les domaines mentionnés, aussi bien à l’IEP que dans les institutions partenaires. Enfin, le GREC a pour mission de valoriser les enquêtes sous la responsabilité de FORS (en particulier Selects, Voto et le Panel Suisse de Ménages) et de renforcer les collaborations entre l’IEP et FORS.

The seminar will be presented by FORS researcher Robert Reinecke. He will present a research project he is currently working on at the Institut des sciences logopédiques (Institute of Speech and Language Pathology) at the University of Neuchâtel.

Abstract:

Population aging is a contemporary world-wide phenomenon: the aged population is currently at its highest level in human history, and the rate at which the population ages will increase over the next decades. This demographical change has profound implications for the organization of modern societies, and calls for the joint contribution of several disciplines to better understand its impact and address its challenges. A major challenge concerns the domain of communication. Age-related decline in language abilities requires the deployment of appropriate communicative strategies in order to efficiently navigate interactions with elderly people. It is thus of the foremost importance to recognize the language changes that accompany aging, as well as their relationship with the decline of further cognitive abilities (e.g. memory).

In this talk, I will give an overview about the cognitive changes that occur over the lifespan and present a study that aims at investigating the processing of presuppositions in older adults. Even though lexical knowledge appears to be resistant to age-related decline, recent research points out that pragmatic abilities decline with age: older adults struggle with interpreting indirect meanings and humorous uses of language and fail to rely on important social cues for language comprehension, such as emotional prosody. These results clearly show that aging impacts the pragmatics of language, and they raise the question of how consistent is this effect. Pragmatic abilities include assessing discourse appropriateness and relevance, and enriching meaning beyond what is explicitly said. In this respect, the ability to recover a speaker’s presuppositions plays a crucial role in language understanding. In fact, presuppositions represent the background information, communicated as taken for granted, that needs to be recovered in order to establish discourse relevance and the appropriateness of interlocutors’ utterances. Consider the utterance “Paul stopped smoking”. The speaker here asserts that Paul does not smoke and presupposes that he has been smoking. The recovery of the presupposition is triggered by the change of state verb stop. In order to better understand the role of working memory capacity in understanding and recovering presuppositions across the lifespan, I present a study, in which the mental workload of the task was manipulated (low vs high).

This FORS Lunch Seminar will take place on Thursday, November 14, from 12:15 to 13:15 in room 5899 at Geopolis.

Le cycle de conférence du GREC vous invite à suivre la présentation de Alice Evans (King’s College, London) intitulée:

Overcoming the global despondency trap: Strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains

Abstract:

Many activists are stuck in a despondency trap. Never seeing radical reform, they assume it is impossible, moderate their ambitions, and invest in more feasible but sub-optimal alternatives. This creates a negative feedback loop, in which the dearth of radical reform becomes self-fulfilling. But if reformists see advances at home and abroad, they may become more optimistic about collective mobilisation and break out of their despondency trap. This is shown by tracing the drivers of ground-breaking legislation. From 2018, large French firms must mitigate risks of environmental and human rights abuses in their global supply chains, or else be liable. This bill – the world’s first of its kind – was vociferously contested by businesses. But French campaigners and politicians persisted for four years, because fortuitous circumstances fueled hope for reform. Meanwhile in Switzerland, a huge civil society coalition is pushing for corporate accountability. Although the right-wing government courts a wealth of multinationals, Swiss activists knew they could change the constitution if their popular initiative gained 100’000 signatures and a subsequent majority of the people and cantons. Believing change was possible, a growing coalition invested in sustained activism. As more organisations joined, others gained confidence in the possibility of legislative change, so invested in the Responsible Business Initiative. Their advances have delivered a positive shock to activists across Europe, inspired to launch similar campaigns, and escape their despondency trap.

Géopolis Room 2879, 16h

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Le Groupe de Recherche sur les Élections et la Citoyenneté Politique (GREC) constitue une unité de recherche de l’IEP. Il regroupe des chercheuses et chercheurs — à l’IEP mais également au sein d’autres institutions — s’intéressant aux élections et votations, aux partis politiques, aux mouvements sociaux ou à la politique contestataire, et plus globalement aux questions de citoyenneté politique.

Les objectifs de ce centre de recherche sont multiples. Premièrement, le GREC sert de lieu d’échange intellectuel et de discussion pour les chercheurs et docto­rants de l’IEP et d’autres institutions travaillant dans les domaines des élections et des votations, des mouvements sociaux, de l’activisme et de la citoyenneté politique. A ce titre, il favorise les contacts et collaborations avec l’extérieur, notamment en invitant des conférenciers d’autres universités. Deuxièmement, le GREC entend renforcer la visibilité des recherches qui se font dans les domaines mentionnés, aussi bien à l’IEP que dans les institutions partenaires. Enfin, le GREC a pour mission de valoriser les enquêtes sous la responsabilité de FORS (en particulier Selects, Voto et le Panel Suisse de Ménages) et de renforcer les collaborations entre l’IEP et FORS.

The organizing committee

Jacques-Antoine Gauthier

Jessica Herzing

Oliver Lipps

Caroline Roberts

Stephanie Steinmetz

Submit your abstract now !

2020 workshop in Lausanne

Zoé Kergomard from Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris presents a paper called “Shall the “people” speak? Elites and electoral participation in France, Germany and Switzerland since 1945.”

The GREC organizes a series of conferences on topics within the scope of its scientific activities: political activism and protest, voting behaviour, citizenship, altruism, etc. The invited speakers are in principle senior researchers working at other universities in Switzerland and abroad.

https://www.unil.ch/grec/home/menuguid/activites.html

The presentation will take place at Géopolis, University of Lausanne, Room 2235, October 16, 2019, 5 pm.

The programme of the conference series

Weakening social cohesion in Europe? Indicators, analysis and policy implications

This is the theme of the 14th Conference “Social Monitoring and Reporting in Europe” at Villa Vigoni, Loveno di Menaggio, Italy.

Invited are contributions looking at social cohesion as an important topic of social monitoring and reporting from either perspective, within as well as between European societies. More specifically, the conference seeks to bring together and discuss empirical evidence, allowing to better assess whether or not social cohesion within and between societies is weakening or declining.

The European Consortium of Sociological Research (ECSR) will hold its next annual conference at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland on 12-14 September 2019. The conference theme is:

https://ecsr2019.sciencesconf.org/

La septième édition du «Festival suisse des méthodes qualitatives» se déroulera les lundi 9 et mardi 10 septembre 2019 à l’Université de Lausanne (bâtiment Géopolis).

Selon une formule désormais bien rodée, le Festival se propose de présenter les innovations récentes dans le domaine des méthodes qualitatives et mixtes. A l’instar de l’édition de 2017, la manifestation se propose une fois encore de mettre l’accent sur une thématique particulière. Pour cette édition, ce sont les enjeux et les défis soulevés par l’open data qui seront mis en avant par le biais de 3 ateliers thématiques et deux séances plénières.

Le Festival offre une plateforme d’échange aux chercheuses et chercheurs des sciences sociales et humaines (et spécialement aux doctorant-e-s et post-doctorant-e-s) désirant se former à de nouvelles méthodes. Il vise également à réunir la communauté de recherche qualitative active en Suisse romande et se déroulera principalement en langue française. Plus concrètement, des spécialistes renommé-e-s seront à disposition pour discuter de l’application de méthodes et théories dans le cadre de différents ateliers de recherche. Les participant-e-s qui le désirent auront ainsi l’occasion d’aborder des questions au plus proche de leurs préoccupations.

Le lundi après-midi aura lieu la conférence de Ghislaine Chartron (CNAM):  « L’ouverture des données en SHS » et la table ronde « Les enjeux de l’open data pour la recherche qualitative »

Choix des ateliers

Prix du Festival:

CHF 120.- + TVA (3 ateliers)

Ce prix contient la participation à trois ateliers, les pauses café et 2 bons de repas et l’apéritif.

CHF 80.- + TVA (2 ateliers)

Ce prix contient la participation à deux ateliers, les pauses café et 2 bons de repas et l’apéritif.

Inscription

https://forscenter.ch/event/7eme-festival-suisse-des-methodes-qualitatives/

Photo credit: ID 149505197 © Profitimage | Dreamstime.com

You need to acquire new or other tools and approaches, that where not covered during your formal training?

After having completed your initial degrees (bachelor, master) you start working on a PhD project or get a job as (research) assistant or collaborator within academia or outside. You feel that your methodological skills are somewhat shaky, too theoretical and many practical problems were not really covered?

Then attend our Summer School in Social Science Methods in Lugano between August 16 and 30, 2019:

Intensive one-week courses (Monday to Friday). Even if your work load is very heavy, you should be able to spare 5 days in late summer to learn something new.

Oriented towards real practical applications, not only abstract theory and trivial technical exercises (you will be able to apply what you have learned when back home)

Highly qualified instructors, experts in their field and open to discuss your research problems (Instructors are asked to spend at least 50% of the teaching time to applied work and discussions of problems, including problems you encounter within your research projects.)

Small groups of highly motivated participants: Meet and exchange with fellow participants working in many different scientific disciplines and from many institutions in Switzerland and abroad

Last but not least: the location (Lugano)

Detailed information:

https://forscenter.ch/events-training/summer-school/

Programme:

https://forscenter.ch/events-training/summer-school/workshop-programme/

This is the topic of the next FORS Lunch seminar with Jessica Herzing, Caroline Roberts and Daniel Gatica-Perez (EPFL).

From 12:15 to 13h15 in room 5408 at Geopolis, UNIL.

Smartphones present many exciting opportunities for social researchers across a wide range of disciplines. Yet there are numerous challenges associated with gaining the cooperation of research participants, maintaining their privacy, and developing and exploiting technologies that are simultaneously adapted to human behavior, engaging to use (e.g. by taking photographs, or providing access to their sensor data), and which motivate the sharing of information for research purposes.

In this presentation, we will give an overview of our research into public willingness in Switzerland to participate in surveys on mobile phones. We will start with a brief summary of current research on mobile web data collection, in particular, data collection using smartphone applications, and the opportunities and challenges it presents for survey researchers. Then we will describe our current research in this domain (the LOIS project generally, Selects Civique specifically), and how it addresses some of these opportunities and challenges. We will focus in particular on the design of the Selects Civique study, which is currently in the field, and present some preliminary findings. We will also present next steps for the research and discuss some of the implications for the future of survey data collection in Swiss surveys.

10th International Conference of Panel Data Users in Switzerland: 20 years of the Swiss Household Panel

Registration is now open for the special anniversary edition of the International Conference of Panel Data Users. The conference will include a plenary session with Prof. Monica Budowski on the historical development of the Swiss Household Panel, a round table on the future of the SHP and household panels in general, as well as thematic sessions. The thematic sessions cover a variety of topics, including health and well-being, education and labour market, socio-economic inequality and mobility, family and gender, religion and religiosity, ethnic minorities and migration, politics and attitudes, households’ energy demand, survey methodology, and longitudinal methods.

Program

All abstracts

Accommodation

Conference venue

The next FORS Lunch Seminar will take place on Monday, Mai 6, from 12:15 to 13h15 in room 5408 at Geopolis.

Marieke Voorpostel will present the results of the mixed mode pilot conducted by the Swiss Household Panel.

First results of the two-wave mixed mode pilot for the Swiss Household Panel

In a two-wave pilot, The Swiss Household Panel (SHP) is exploring the feasibility of using online questionnaires as a complement or alternative to the current main mode of telephone interviewing. The pilot compares three designs: mainly telephone, mixed telephone/web, and mainly web. The fieldwork of the two waves was completed early 2018 and 2019. In this presentation, I discuss findings with respect to response rates, sample composition (W1 and W2) and measurement quality (W1). I conclude with preliminary conclusions with respect to the design of the next refreshment sample of the SHP that will start in 2020.

Simon Seiler, Marc Höglinger (ZHAW) and Jürgen Maurer (UNIL)

Health of the older population in Switzerland

Mandated by the Federal Office of Public Health, this study uses data from the “Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe” (SHARE) to describe the health of the population aged 55 and older in Switzerland. Besides a general overview over subjective health, non-communicable deceases (NCDs) and health behaviors, the report draws on the WHO’s concept of “healthy aging” by placing a special emphasizes on individual’s quality of life and autonomy. The study reveals important differences by gender, age, income, educational level, migration status, and household situation for most of the analyzed health related aspects of the older population in Switzerland.

The Lunch Seminar will take place at Géopolis in room 5408, 12:15 to 13:15.

Oliver Hümbelin, Senior Researcher at Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH) Centre for Social Security, will give a talk entitled:

How deductions undermine the redistribution effect of taxes – research with Swiss tax data 

Abstract

In many OECD countries, the inequality between the rich and the poor has increased in recent decades. Some authors put the blame on the withdrawal of the state, which is redistributing less and less through progressive taxes and social benefits. In comparative studies Switzerland is seen as a country with low economic inequality and low redistribution. At the same time, the analysis based on the tax statistics of the Federal Tax Administration shows a significant increase in inequality between and within individual cantons. Since a large proportion of direct taxes in Switzerland are regulated at the cantonal level, it seems appropriate to conduct welfare state analyses at this level. Tax data offer special opportunities with the level of detail of the tax data making it possible to examine direct effects of the progression of federal, cantonal and municipal taxes but also indirect effects of tax deductions. The main part of the talk presents empirical results from a large Swiss Canton to demonstrate this potential. Using a Gini-based redistribution effect decomposition, it is possible to gain a complete picture of the redistribution effects of the visible (tax rates) and hidden (tax deductions) fiscal instruments.

The meeting will take place on Tuesday March 26, 2019, Room 5799, Géopolis, UNIL, 12:15-13:30.

The next FORS Lunch Seminar will take place on Monday March 11^th from 12:15 to 13:15 in room 5899 at Geopolis.

Valérie-Anne Ryser and Marieke Heers will present their ongoing research project titled:

The relationship between early child-care types and parents’ subjective wellbeing and work family balance

Objective: This study investigates what child-care patterns – parental, formal, informal (mostly grandparental) and mixed care – parents of 0 to 4-years old children use and how these arrangements relate to different domains of parents’ subjective wellbeing (SWB) and work-family balance (WFB).

Background: Working parents rely on non-parental child-care to enable them managing the simultaneous demands of work and family. Yet, evidence on the relationship between child-care arrangements and parental outcomes is lacking. The Swiss case is particularly interesting for studying how early child-care relates to different domains of parents’ SWB and WFB, as child-care is limited in offer and costly.

Method: Based on 16 waves of the Swiss Household Panel, from 2002 to 2017, multilevel regression models were used to estimate the relationship between child-care types and parental SWB and WFB.

Results: Compared to grandparental child-care, the use of formal and mixed child-care modes is associated with decreased life satisfaction, while mixed child-care modes relate to increased levels of negative affect. Relying on relatives, institutions or mixed child-care modes relates to decreased levels of positive affect. Finally, mixed child-care modes are associated with higher difficulties to combine work and family.

Conclusion: Grandparental care is positively related to several dimensions of parents’ SWB and WFB. The flexibility and less rigid character of this child-care arrangement offer parents psychological relief and emotional support helping them maintaining a better overall quality of life.

Tuesday February 26, 2019, Room 5799, Géopolis, UNIL, 12:15-13:30

Pluralistic memories as a resource for conflict transformation? 

A mixed-methods approach

In societies affected by protracted conflicts, collective experiences of violence are typically complex and multi-layered. This complexity, however, can be hidden in public and mass-mediatized narratives, which often can be simplified, polarized or black-and-white versions of the actual events. For example, stories about events of ingroup perpetration or intergroup solidarity may circulate less in the public sphere, when they contradict the official narratives. However, even silenced or marginalized memories rarely disappear completely, but they can be confined to informal, private forms of preservation and sharing.

This talk addresses the role of knowledge and communication about complex conflict memories in the formation of beliefs about conflict-relevant policies. I will present a mixed-methods approach to the study of complexity in personal conflict memories, implemented in the conflict-ridden societies of Sri Lanka, Burundi, and Palestine as part of the Pluralistic Memories Project (http://wp.unil.ch/pmp/). This approach combines thematic analyses of personal testimonies with quantitative analyses of survey responses related to vignettes derived from these testimonies. Our findings suggest that in safe social spaces, people tend to express conflict narratives that are more multi-layered and complex than those available in public spaces. They further show that the possibility to know and communicate about complex conflict experiences with relevant others plays a pivotal role in the formation of beliefs and expectations about conflict-relevant policies in general and about transitional justice settings in particular.

Dr. Sandra Penic is an FNS Senior Research in the Life Course and Inequalities Research Centre, Institute of Social Sciences, UNIL.

Second Swiss Longitudinal Data Fair, February 14, 2019, University of Lausanne

This one-day event included presentations and posters on various major Swiss longitudinal surveys in the social sciences, including TREE, the Swiss Household Panel, SHARE, CoCon and the LABB of the Swiss Federal Statistical Office and the DAB panel study (Determinants of educational choice and vocational training opportunities). The presenations were followed by practical hands-on sessions in the afternoon.

Consult the list of surveys

Below, the posters and the presentations presented that day.

Posters

SHP

CoCon

SHARE
–Poster 1

–Poster 2

TREE

LABB

DAB panel study

LIVES Lolys (Longitudinal study on youth transition in various regional institutions)

LIVES Single parenthood

Zeppelin

Professional Paths Survey

Morning presentations

SLDF Opening

SHP

COCON

Share: check out this video: http://www.share-project.org/home0.html

TREE

LABB

DAB

Programme

For any information, contact Alexandra Stam at FORS.