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/

Are you currently working with social science data you got from FORS? Or are you planning to do so in the next few months? Then consider submitting your paper to the FORS Data Re-use Award 2023 and get the chance to win up to 1’000 CHF. The Award will be given to young researchers who carry out excellent research that is based on secondary data from SWISSUbase. The deadline for submission is October 1, 2023.

Further information and submission criteria: 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/

Results from the Swiss Household Panel have been discussed extensively in the media recently. The NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) and other journals have reported on the drop of fertility rates in Switzerland. Whereas 30 years ago about 16% of women in Switzerland were childless, this number has increased to 25% today. Valérie-Anne Ryser, senior researcher at the SHP, has been invited to the television broadcast FORUM to discuss these findings. Please find the whole interview here:

All media releases can be found here:

https://forscenter.ch/projects/swiss-household-panel/scientific-activities/

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

Researchers from FORS and the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne held a workshop at the university’s ‘Mystères de l’UNIL’ event from the 1st to the 4th June. The aim was to give children aged 8 to 12 an introduction to data literacy and to raise awareness in the general public of FORS surveys, which collect data on the health of the Swiss population.

The workshop was designed and organised by Caroline Roberts, researcher and lecturer in quantitative methods in the SSP Faculty of UNIL and survey methodologist, who collaborates with FORS on research aimed at improving the quality of our data. The workshop was set-up in collaboration with FORS collaborators Carmen Borrat-Besson and Michèle Ernst-Stähli, and Scientific Mediator Elodie Cachelin and her colleagues on the event organising team, and included an exhibition with 7 stands with interactive activities covering different topics related to measuring the health of the general population with sample surveys.

At each stand, games and activities were led by FORS and LIVES staff members Maud Wieczorek, Robert Reinecke, Louis Durussel and Marc Asensio Manjon, organisers Caroline Roberts, Carmen Borrat-Besson and Michèle Ernst-Stähli, and two students from the Faculty, Camille Haas and Marie Muratori. The activities were designed to illustrate key concepts relating to measuring health in surveys – from the role of data and statistics in decision-making; the different types and sources of health data and the role of surveys; visualising statistics to understand health inequalities, and the importance of ‘good data’ (data for the public good, but also good quality data) in public health research.

During the four-day event, we welcomed around 300 people, including eight school classes from the Lausanne region just starting out in their learning about the world of quantitative data.

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.

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

The 2022 Annual Report showcases our research, our data services, infrastructure and collaboration programs and publications. The report also summarize all of the activities associated with our national and international surveys.

In the editorial of the report, FORS Director Prof. Georg Lutz highlights the fact that research infrastructures are important in many scientific disciplines, as they organise many long-term and collaborative undertakings relevant to entire research communities. FORS not only hosts such infrastructure projects as the national data archive and centre for national and international surveys; FORS also actively contributes to strengthening the position of SSH infrastructures in the long term and ensuring good coordination between existing projects and initiatives.

Consult the FORS Annual Report 2022.

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/

We are pleased to announce the release of the MOSAiCH/ISSP 2022 data on “Family and Changing Gender Roles” and related topics, fielded in spring 2022.

The data and documentation on this release can be found here:  https://www.swissubase.ch/en/catalogue/studies/20135/18818/datasets/2161/2569/overview

The thematic focus of the MOSAiCH Study 2022 lies on the module “Family and Changing Gender Roles V” of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Repeated for the fifth time, this module is one of the longest-running thematic series of the ISSP, with Swiss data also available for the 2012 and 2002 editions. This international part is supplemented by selected socio-demographic questions, and a module composed of Switzerland specific questions.

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)

MOSAiCH 2024 – Call for question contributions

We hereby invite scholars to propose questions for the follow-up survey administered after the ISSP 2024 module on “Digital Societies”. Proposals will be selected according to their scientific quality, thematic relevance and survey applicability. Successful proposals will be fielded in spring 2024 and data will be available early 2025.

The deadline for submissions is Monday 24th of April 2023.

Further information and documentation can be found in the PDF document 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

The Developments in Research and Methods of the Social Sciences (DReMSS) platform represents researchers from the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (SSP) and the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS), who collaborate within the FORS-SSP research programme. It aims to promote and to create synergies between the activities developed by FORS and SSP. The involved researchers share common thematic and methodological interests. The research takes place within three research axes :

• Survey Methodology;
• Inequalities, gender and the life course;
• Data diversity and public good research.

The objectives of the research platform are the following;

• to develop the reputation of FORS and UNIL as high-quality research centres for social science methods and substantive research at national and international level;
• to develop quantitative skills and know-how in Switzerland;
• to contribute to the improvement of survey methodology;
• to contribute to methodological innovations and substantive research in the social sciences;
• to contribute to the discussion between the different actors in the field of social science methods.

These collaborations have already resulted in numerous publications based on data collected or distributed by FORS, as well as other research and teaching activities,” explains Stephanie Steinmetz, Associate Professor of Social Stratification at the Institute of Social Sciences and head of the platform.

Thanks to this research programme, the teaching of quantitative methods in the Faculty of Social Sciences has been developed and strengthened, both at Bachelor and Master level, where major social and political surveys are used as databases and teaching tools and examples.

Visit the DReMSS website, available in English and French.

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/

This Special Issue brings together a large variety of contributions dealing with the influence of issues and issue competition, the structure of attitudes towards immigration and international cooperation and a series of non-policy factors such as campaign consultants and the rise of female representation in Switzerland. In this introduction we place the contributions in the broader framework of current debates in the international literature and stress the substantial and methodological innovations of the articles. Last, we offer some more general thoughts on almost 30 years of Swiss electoral research taking stock of the historical development.

Special Issue:The Swiss National Elections 2019

Issue edited by: Nathalie Giger, Denise Traber, Anke Tresch in the Swiss Political Science Review.