We are proud to announce that our Data Service has obtained, for the second time, the CoreTrustSeal certification.

The CoreTrustSeal is a globally recognized certification awarded to organizations that have demonstrated their dedication to responsible data stewardship and excellence in data management practices. By obtaining this seal, the FORS Data Service has officially confirmed its adherence to rigorous international standards and best practices for ensuring the authenticity, integrity, and reliability of research data.

The CoreTrustSeal is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and recognizing trustworthy data repositories and services. Their comprehensive certification process evaluates an organization’s data management policies, practices, and infrastructure to ensure they meet international criteria for data trustworthiness. CoreTrustSeal certification is highly regarded in the research and data management community as a mark of excellence.

We are honoured to be among organisations dedicated to providing sustainable and trustworthy data infrastructures. This achievement reaffirms our commitment to the data community, our stakeholders, and the pursuit of knowledge. As we continue to serve our community, researchers, and data users, we look forward to leveraging this certification to further enhance data quality, transparency, and collaboration.

Further information: https://www.coretrustseal.org/about/

Travaillez-vous actuellement avec des données de sciences sociales que vous avez obtenues de FORS ? Ou envisagez-vous de le faire dans les prochains mois ? Alors pensez à soumettre votre article au prix FORS Data Re-use Award 2023 et tentez de gagner jusqu’à 1’000 CHF. Ce prix sera décerné aux jeunes chercheuses et chercheurs qui effectuent d’excellentes recherches basées sur des données secondaires. La date limite de soumission est le 1er octobre 2023. Pour plus d’informations: https://forscenter.ch/fors-data-reuse-award-2023/

The CNES Seminar Series casts a spotlight on different National Election Studies that share their experiences in designing and conducting election studies.

Participation is free and open to everyone interested in the practices and methodological aspects of electoral research.

First edition: Implementing mixed-mode surveys

14 November 2023

15:30-17:00 (Central European time, GMT +1)

PROGRAMME

Chair: Eva Heiða Önnudóttir, Icelandic National Election Study (ICENES)

Participation is free but registration is mandatory.

Click here to register no later than 31 October 2023.

Further information on CNES: https://www.cnes.community/

The ISSP is pleased to announce the publication of the final release of the international ISSP 2020 Environment IV data file (ZA7650_v2.0.0), which includes data from Switzerland and 27 other ISSP member countries around the world.

The data and associated documentation for this release can be found at: https://www.gesis.org/en/issp/modules/issp-modules-by-topic/environment/2020

Parallel to the final release, the ISSP is organizing its second ISSP User Conference scheduled to take place online on December 4, 2023, with a primary focus on the topic of Environment. The Call for Abstracts is currently open for submissions:

https://issp.org/about-issp/issp-user-conference/

Les résultats du Panel suisse de ménages ont été largement commentés dans les médias ces derniers temps. La NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) et d’autres journaux ont fait mention de la baisse du taux de fécondité en Suisse. Alors que 16% des femmes en Suisse étaient sans enfant il y a 30 ans, ce chiffre est passé à 25% aujourd’hui. Valérie-Anne Ryser, chercheuse senior au PSM, a été invitée à l’émission RTS FORUM pour discuter de ces résultats. L’intégralité de l’interview est disponible ici :

Tous les communiqués de presse sont disponibles ici :
https://forscenter.ch/projects/swiss-household-panel/scientific-activities/?lang=fr

Switzerland has been granted full membership in the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA ERIC), as unanimously approved by the CESSDA General Assembly on June 8, 2023. CESSDA ERIC aims to promote social science research and support national and international research cooperation by bringing together social science data archives across Europe. In a data-driven research world, trusted data and service infrastructures such as CESSDA ERIC are crucial in fostering scientific innovation through data sharing and data accessibility across national borders.

Previously, Swiss participation in European research infrastructures was limited to observer status. However, in December 2022, the Swiss Parliament created the legal framework for Switzerland to become a full member of European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs) and allowed Switzerland to request full membership in CESSDA along with five other ERICs. As a result of this development, Switzerland will now have a formal voice in CESSDA decision-making through its member status and voting rights in the CESSDA ERIC General Assembly.

FORS has been nominated as the national CESSDA service provider by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). FORS has been an active member of CESSDA as an observer for many years and will continue to do so with renewed status as a full member. SERI’s Katharina Eggenberger and FORS’s Brian Kleiner will work together to represent Switzerland in the CESSDA General Assembly.

The collaboration between Swiss researchers and research infrastructures with those in other European countries is highly relevant to advance science in many domains, and FORS and CESSDA therefore welcome this milestone with FORS joining CESSDA ERIC as a full member.

For additional information please contact:

• FORS Director: Georg Lutz (lutz@fors.unil.ch)
• CESSDA Director: Bonnie Wolff-Boenisch (wolff-boenisch@cessda.eu)

CESSDA stands for Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives and ERIC stands for European Research Infrastructure Consortium. CESSDA provides large-scale, integrated and sustainable data services to the social sciences. It brings together social science data archives across Europe, with the aim of promoting the results of social science research and supporting national and international research and cooperation.

www.cessda.org

List of all service providers

The third edition of data and documentation for the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 10 has just been published.

Data from all 31 countries who took part in Round 10 (2020-22), including Switzerland, is now available via the ESS Data Portal.

A short briefing can be consulted here: Notes on ESS Round 10 data release.

The Round 10 survey includes the core questionnaire, fielded in every round.

It also includes two rotating modules: Europeans’ understandings and evaluations of democracy and Digital social contacts in work and family life.

Additionally, a special COVID-19 module was fielded by countries on a voluntary basis.

Detailed information on Round 10 data release is available on the ESS website.

The data overview for Round 10 Switzerland can be consulted here: Ernst Stähli, Michèle, Ochsner, Michael, Pollien, Alexandre, Nisple, Karin & Sapin, Marlène (2023). European Social Survey, Switzerland – 2021 (Round 10) (1.0.0) [Dataset]. FORS data service.https://doi.org/10.48573/8p06-0t58

Des chercheurs et chercheuses de FORS et de la Faculté des sciences sociales et politiques ont animé un atelier aux Mystères de l’UNIL du 1er au 4 juin, visant à donner une introduction à la littératie des données aux enfants de 8 à 12 ans, et à mieux visibiliser auprès du grand public nos enquêtes qui récoltent des données sur la santé de la population Suisse.

L’atelier a été conçu et organisé par Caroline Roberts, chercheuse et enseignante des méthodes quantitatives auprès de la Faculté SSP à l’UNIL et méthodologue d’enquête collaborant avec FORS sur des recherches visant à améliorer la qualité de nos données. Mis en oeuvre en collaboration avec Carmen Borrat-Besson et Michèle Ernst-Stähli, ainsi que la médiatrice Elodie Cachelin et ses collègues chargés de l’organisation des Mystères, l’atelier a pris la forme d’une exposition incluant 7 postes interactifs traitant de différents thèmes liés à la mesure de la santé de la population avec des enquêtes par sondage.

À chaque poste, différentes activités ludiques ont été animées par des collaborateurs-trices de FORS et de LIVES: Maud Wieczorek, Robert Reinecke, Louis Durussel, et Marc Asensio Manjon; les organisatrices: Caroline Roberts, Carmen Borrat-Besson et Michèle Ernst-Stähli, et deux assistantes-étudiantes de la faculté: Camille Haas et Marie Muratori. Les activités ont été conçues pour illustrer les notions clés de la mesure de la santé par enquête, à savoir le rôle des données et des statistiques dans la prise de décision, les différents types et sources de données sur la santé et le rôle des enquêtes, la visualisation des statistiques pour comprendre les inégalités de santé et l’importance des ‘bonnes données’ (données pour le bien public, mais aussi des données de bonne qualité) dans la recherche sur la santé publique. Durant les 4 jours de la manifestation, nous avons accueilli près de 300 personnes, dont 8 classes d’élèves de la région lausannoise débutant leur apprentissage dans le monde des données quantitatives.

Copyright: Caroline Roberts

We have published Wave 23 of the SHP! You can find all the data sets on SWISSUbase (Living in Switzerland Waves 1-23 + Covid 19 data). Wave 23 contains the two modules Religion and Psychological dimensions as well as new questions on chronic diseases.

You can access the new data here: https://doi.org/10.48573/cm0q-ah20

Christoph Zangger from the University of Bern has published a new study based on the SHP Covid-19 study. He investigated how and for whom relations with neighbors changed during the pandemic and how these changes impacted subjective well-being and trust in other people. His study shows that the most vulnerable groups in terms of health and socio-economic status saw their subjective well-being and trust negatively impacted through the challenging circumstances of the pandemic as well as indirectly through a relative deterioration of neighborly relations.

Find the detailed results here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2022.101307

To increase the user-friendliness of the SHP data, we rethought the documentation page of our website. All the information concerning the SHP documentation is now compiled on one page and easily accessible. You can also find a new overview of all variables  included in the SHP and their availability per year.

This is our new documentation page.

Registration for the 27th edition of the Summer School is still open and will remain open until all places are filled or until the 14th of July – whichever is sooner.

To the registration.

In 2023, in response to requests from past editions’ participants, we are introducing three new courses:

• Designing and Conducting Social-scientific Experiments
• Conducting a Grounded Theory Study
• Web Scraping and Data Mining in R

Notre rapport annuel 2022 présente nos recherches, nos services de données, nos infrastructures, nos programmes de collaboration et nos publications. Le rapport résume également toutes les activités liées à nos enquêtes nationales et internationales.

Dans l’éditorial du rapport, le directeur de FORS, le professeur Georg Lutz, souligne le fait que les infrastructures de recherche sont importantes dans de nombreuses disciplines scientifiques, car elles organisent de nombreux projets à long terme qui concernent des communautés de recherche entières. FORS n’héberge pas seulement des projets d’infrastructure tels que les archives nationales de données; FORS contribue aussi activement à renforcer la position des infrastructures de sciences humaines à long terme et à assurer une bonne coordination entre les projets et les initiatives existants.

Consultez notre rapport annuel  2022 (en anglais).

The 6th wave of Selects was fielded  between September 26 and November 6, 2022. This wave provides insights, among others, into vote intention in federal elections, vote decision in popular votes, opinion on various issues related to the implications of the war in the Ukraine (like the reception of Ukrainian refugees, energy policy, security policy, etc.).

The data of waves 1 to 6 of the panel survey SELECTS can be found on SWISSUbase

https://doi.org/10.48573/4my6-rd07

Informaition on SELECTS: https://forscenter.ch/projects/selects/

Nous avons le plaisir d’annoncer la publication des données MOSAiCH/ISSP 2022 sur la famille et les rôles liés au genre collectées au printemps 2022.

Les données et la documentation sont disponibles ici : https://www.swissubase.ch/en/catalogue/studies/20135/18818/datasets/2161/2569/overview

L’édition 2022 de MOSAiCH est construite autour du module « Family and Changing Gender Roles V » de l’International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Ce module, qui est répété pour la cinquième fois, est l’une des séries thématiques les plus anciennes de l’ISSP, pour laquelle des données suisses sont également disponibles pour les éditions 2012 et 2002. Cette partie internationale est complétée par des questions socio-démographiques sélectionnées, ainsi qu’un module composé de questions spécifiques à la Suisse.

The ESS Scientific Advisory Board has completed its selection of rotating modules for the European Social Survey Round 12.

For the first time the Board has selected 2 repeat modules. The successful modules are:

• ‘Personal and social wellbeing’ led by Frank Martela, Aalto University, School of Science (Finland)
• ‘Attitudes to immigrants and refugees’ led by Anthony Heath, University of Oxford (UK).  This module team includes NCs from Portugal (Alice Ramos) and Ukraine (Tymofii Brik).

Both modules address crucial academic and policy relevant topics for Europe and provide both innovation and continuity, thereby supporting new topics as well as time series analysis. For more information and to access the proposals see News | European Social Survey (ESS)

The 12th International Conference of Panel Data Users in Switzerland will take place on June 14-15, 2023 at the University of Lausanne.

This edition will include thematic sessions as well as a poster session. The thematic sessions cover a wide variety of topics, such as health and well-being, education and labour market, socio-economic inequality and mobility, families, gender, ethnic minorities and migration, politics and attitudes, survey methodology, and longitudinal methods. We also offer the possibility to propose complete sessions on other themes.

We welcome all contributions based on longitudinal data, such as the “Swiss Household Panel” (SHP), the “LIVES-FORS Cohort”, the “Transition from Education to Employment” (TREE), the “Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe” (SHARE), and the “Swiss Survey of Children and Youth” (COCON). As the SHP is a member of the Cross National Equivalent File (CNEF), we especially welcome presentations or posters comparing Switzerland with other countries participating in the CNEF. Please note that the language of the conference is English.

Deadline for abstracts and session proposals is February 27, 2023.

The conference is interdisciplinary, and we welcome participants from all areas of the social sciences. Please submit your session proposal or your abstract for a presentation or a poster to swisspanel@fors.unil.ch.

Abstracts for presentations and posters

Please include in the abstract:

• The names and affiliations of all authors;
• The name(s) and e-mail addresses of the attending author(s);
• The session to which the abstract belongs. Please indicate poster session or one of the thematic sessions listed above. It is possible to suggest more than one suitable session;
• The title of the presentation or the poster;
• An abstract of around 250 words (max. 500).

Session proposals

We can only accept complete session proposals that include at least three presentations. Please include in the proposal:

• Name, affiliation and e-mail address of the chair;
• Title of the session;
• Titles and abstracts (250-500 words each) of the presentations in the session;
• Names, affiliations and e-mail addresses of the presenters.

The PDF of the call

MOSAiCH 2024 – Appel à contributions 

Nous invitons les chercheuses et chercheurs à proposer des questions pour l’enquête qui suivra le module ISSP 2024 portant sur les sociétés digitales. Les critères de sélection seront notamment la qualité scientifique, la pertinence pour une utilisation scientifique large et la qualité méthodologique des questions. Les propositions retenues seront administrées en printemps 2024 et les données seront disponibles début 2025. Le délai de soumission est fixé au lundi 24 avril 2023.

Vous trouverez de plus amples informations dans le document PDF CALL MOSAiCH 2024.

The European Social Survey (ESS) has published data from an additional 15 countries who participated in Round 10 (2020-22) of our survey.

This second release – available exclusively through the ESS Data Portal – includes 25 countries whose data has been published alongside post-stratification weights.

Due to measures implemented to help prevent the spread of Coronavirus, some countries fielded our Round 10 questionnaire using self-completion methods for the first time.

This updated dataset therefore includes 19 countries who administered the survey in line with previous rounds: using only in-person interviews.

Data collected in this way is available from 19 countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

Data from six countries – Austria, Germany, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Sweden – was collected through online and postal questionnaires using a ‘self-completion’ design.

As a result of the inclusion of data that was collected using only self-completion modes, we have published a short briefing: Notes on ESS Round 10 data release.

Read the briefing: Notes on ESS Round 10 data release

Download the latest data from the ESS Data Portal

Further information on the release can be found on the ESS website

The “Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) Research Infrastructures in Switzerland” initiative is piloted by a coordination group consisting of the directors of national research infrastructures (RIs) in the SSH, the national coordinators of international SSH RIs with Swiss participation (CESSDA, CLARIN, DARIAH, ESS, SHARE, GGP) and one representative of the Swiss Academy for the Swiss Academy for Social and Human Sciences (SAGW).

As a follow up to the first event (31 May 2022) and of the position paper (November 2022), the coordination group of this initiative invites the members of the Swiss SSH scientific community interested in research infrastructures to a second event on 18 January 2023.

This meeting has three main objectives.

• First, to raise awareness on the importance of research infrastructure in the SSH domain and how prioritisation and funding works (national and ESFRI roadmap process).
• Second, to share experiences from other countries and the European level on how collaborations between projects and infrastructures work.
• Third, to give a platform to potential new Swiss RIs in the SSH domain in order to reflect on needs of the SSH community and how to create synergies and join forces.

To reach these objectives, we will welcome four invited speakers from abroad (see the updated Programme), who will share their experience of how collaboration and clustering happened successfully in other countries and at the European level. In addition, the floor will also be given to several Swiss projects of RIs in the SSH field with the aim to reflect on user needs and possible synergies. Finally, the day will end with a Round Table with an open discussion, in which invited guests from the SNSF, the SERI, swissuniversities, the SAGW and all members of the audience will have the opportunity to express themselves.

Register now !

Organizing committee

Prof. Dr. Georg Lutz (FORS)

Dr. Cristina Grisot (DARIAH-CH & CLARIN-CH)

Dr. Elena Chestnova (USI)

Dr. Claire Clivaz (SIB)

Dr. Beat Immenhauser (SAGW)

Further information and registration: https://www.dariah.ch/post/ssh-research-infrastructures-in-switzerland-initiative

To the interview

Cette plateforme « Développement de la recherche et des méthodes en sciences sociales » (DReMSS) regroupe des chercheurs·ses de la Faculté des SSP et du Centre suisse d’expertise en sciences sociales (FORS) qui collaborent au sein du programme de recherche FORS-SSP autour de trois axes de recherche :

• Méthodologie d’enquête ;
• Inégalités, genre et parcours de vie ;
• Diversité des données et recherche sur le bien public.

Les objectifs de la plateforme de recherche sont les suivants :

• Développer la réputation de FORS et de l’UNIL en tant que centres de recherche de haute qualité concernant les méthodes des sciences sociales et la recherche substantive au niveau national et international ;
• Développer les compétences et le savoir-faire quantitatifs en Suisse ;
• Contribuer à l’amélioration de la méthodologie d’enquête ;
• Contribuer aux innovations méthodologiques et à la recherche substantielle en sciences sociales ;
• Contribuer à la discussion entre les différents acteurs dans le domaine des méthodes en sciences sociales.

« Ces collaborations ont déjà permis de nombreuses publications basées sur les données collectées ou distribuées par FORS, ainsi que d’autres activités de recherche et d’enseignement » explique Stephanie Steinmetz, Professeure associée de stratification sociale à l’Institut des sciences sociales et responsable de la plateforme.

Grâce à ce programme de recherche, l’enseignement des méthodes quantitatives dans la Faculté des SSP a été développé et renforcé, tant au niveau du Bachelor que du Master, où les principales enquêtes sociales et politiques sont utilisées comme bases de données et outils/exemples pédagogiques.

Consultez le site web du DReMSS

1st ISSP User Conference on Social Inequality

The ISSP is very pleased to announce its first ISSP User Conference on Social Inequality, which will be held online on December 12, 2022.

The Call for Abstracts is now open. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2022.

The call: https://issp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Call-for-Abstracts_ISSP-User-Conference.pdf

Further information on the ISSP: www.issp.org

Over the last few months, a coordination group consisting of the directors of national research infrastructures in the SSH, the national coordinators of international SSH RIs with Swiss participation (CESSDA, CLARIN, DARIAH, ESS, SHARE, GGP) and the representatives of the Swiss Academy for the SSH have been working on a position paper on the situation of Research Infrastructures in the SSH field in Switzerland. We believe that the current situation is unsatisfactory, and we want to raise awareness and ask for a better acknowledgment of the interests of the SSH domain among policy makers.

While the need for research infrastructures is well-established in some disciplines, there is still a partial lack of understanding that the social sciences and humanities (SSH) need well-established and well-funded infrastructures. The national roadmap process disfavours SSH projects and, as a result, financial investment in SSH infrastructures is minimal. Therefore, it is difficult for new national projects to be included in the national infrastructure roadmap.

We call on the bodies responsible for prioritising and funding research infrastructures to recognise the needs of the Swiss SSH community and fund infrastructures in this area. In order to improve the situation for SSH infrastructures and to create a fair and equal funding environment, several steps are needed:

• Higher education institutions as well as research policy actors such as swissuniversities and SERI should recognize the need for the SSH to advance research through infrastructures and create respective funding and governance models.
• Switzerland should systematically participate in European SSH infrastructures once the relevance for the Swiss research community is established.
• The national roadmap process should create fair and equal conditions for prioritizing infrastructures in all disciplines.
• Stronger emphasis should be placed on data preservation and reuse.
• The SSH research community needs to coordinate well, create synergies between existing infrastructures and long-term projects, and make sure that newly proposed infrastructure projects for future roadmap processes are well linked to existing RI at the national and international level.

If you support the position paper and are willing to sign the letter, please do so before 30 September 2022 using this form: https://researchprojectjb.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9sLXT8MRxmjClZc

On behalf of the coordinating team,

Prof. Dr. Georg Lutz, Directors of FORS

Dr. Cristina Grisot, Scientific Coordinator CLARIN-CH and DARIAH-CH

Does your research involve data collection in a social science discipline or involve human participants? Do you want to learn more about key data management practices throughout the research process?
If so, this series of four free webinars is for you.

The topics are the following:

• Informed consent (27.09.2022)
• Data documentation (11.10.2022)
• Quantitative data anonymisation  (1.11.2022)
• Qualitative data anonymisation (22.11.2022)

The webinars are given by experts in the field at FORS. The participation is free, yet registration is required.

Further information and registration: https://forscenter.ch/data-management-webinar-series/