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.

We are looking for a Junior Scientific Collaborator (80-100%) to strengthen the team of the Swiss Household Panel (SHP).

Informationen über die Stelle

Stellenantritt: März 2023 oder nach Vereinbarung.
Dauer des Vertrages: unbefristet.
Arbeitsort: Géopolis, Campus der Universität Lausanne, wobei auch teilweise von zuhause gearbeitet werden kann.
Gehalt: Das Gehalt richtet sich nach dem Gehaltsschema der Universität Lausanne.

Stellenbeschreibung 

Ihre Arbeit wird hauptsächlich darin bestehen, an den Projekten des Schweizer Haushalt-Panels mitzuarbeiten. Ihre Hauptaufgaben sind:

• Aufbereitung und Verbreitung der SHP-Daten
• Kommunikation mit den Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmern der SHP Studie  (z.B. Newsletter)
• Bearbeitung der SHP- Webseite
• Organisation von Workshops/Seminaren für die Nutzerinnen und Nutzer der SHP-Daten
• Mitarbeit an der Schulung von Interviewerinnen und Interviewern und Monitoring der Feldphase
• Mitarbeit an der Ausgestaltung und zukünftigen Entwicklung des SHP
• Durchführung von wissenschaftlicher Forschung mit den SHP-Daten und das Verfassen wissenschaftlicher Publikationen (Möglichkeit, eine Doktorarbeit zu schreiben)
• Mittelfristig werden Sie Nutzerinnen und Nutzer der SHP-Daten beraten und unterstützen

Ihr Profil

• Sie haben vor kurzem einen Universitäts- oder Fachhochschulmaster in Sozialwissenschaften oder einer verwandten Disziplin erworben.
• Sie haben ein ausgeprägtes Interesse an wissenschaftlicher Forschung und grossen Umfragen. Berufserfahrung im Bereich Forschung und/oder Umfragen ist von Vorteil.
• Sie verfügen über sehr gute Kenntnisse in quantitativen Methoden und beherrschen mindestens eine Statistiksoftware wie SPSS, R, Stata oder ähnliches.
• Idealerweise sind Sie bereits mit den Daten des SHP vertraut und haben im Rahmen eines Kurses/Seminars oder Ihrer Masterarbeit damit gearbeitet.
• Ihre Muttersprache ist (Schweizer-)Deutsch und Sie verfügen über sehr gute Französisch- und Englischkenntnisse.
• Sie sind eine aufgeschlossene und dynamische Persönlichkeit, die gerne im Team arbeitet.
• Sie verfügen über gute organisatorische Fähigkeiten, arbeiten genau, sind initiativ und selbstständig.

Arbeitsumfeld

Wir bieten anregende Arbeitsbedingungen in einem dynamischen, mehrsprachigen Umfeld. Diese Stelle bietet einer kürzlich diplomierten, engagierten und dynamischen Person die Möglichkeit, ihre eigenen Forschungsinteressen zu entwickeln und gegebenenfalls ein Doktorat zu absolvieren.

Weitere Informationen zum Schweizer Haushalt-Panel und FORS finden Sie unter www.forscenter.ch.
Für weitere Informationen steht Ihnen Herr Robin Tillmann gerne zur Verfügung: robin.tillmann@fors.unil.ch, Tel. 021 692 37 21.

Bewerbungsfrist: 14.10.2022 

Wir erwarten Ihre vollständigen Bewerbungsunterlagen (Lebenslauf mit Monatsdetails, Zeugnisse, Zertifikate und Motivationsschreiben, Masterarbeit, kurze Beschreibung der Forschungsinteressen), vorzugsweise in einer Datei im PDF-Format.

Um Ihre Bewerbung einzureichen, verwenden Sie bitte das Stellenportal der Universität Lausanne https://www.unil.ch/carrieres/emplois -> postes ouverts.

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/

Are you a doctoral or post-doctoral student and are 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 2022 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, 2022.

Further information: https://forscenter.ch/fors-data-reuse-award-2022/

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.

Reproducibility and transparency are important principles of open science when interpreting and understanding research results. Our new FORS replication service, powered by SWISSUbase, is a free solution for journals and researchers to facilitate the sharing of the replication materials underlying publications. The replication materials are fully citable with a DOI and under a CC licence.

How to deposit your replication materials

The FORS replication service

For any questions you can get in contact with the FORS Data Service at dataservice@fors.unil.ch

We are looking for a Junior Scientific Collaborator (80-100%) to strengthen the team of the Swiss Household Panel (SHP).

_________________________________

The Swiss National Science Foundation has approved the project “Swiss Direct Democracy in the 21st Century” (SDD-21). Specifically, the influence of advertising campaigns and digital media on the mobilisation and opinion-forming of citizens, as well as the effect of individual moral concepts and political knowledge on voting decisions, will be investigated. For the analysis, data will be collected from representative online follow-up surveys conducted during the project period for each federal vote. In addition, a long-term panel will be constituted and focus groups will be conducted on selected votes.

Political scientists from eight Swiss universities, the Liechtenstein Institute and FORS are involved in SDD-21. FORS will be responsible for the data collection. The project should not only contribute to the integration of voting research in Switzerland and its international visibility, but also lay the foundations for the establishment of a long-term research infrastructure on voting behaviour.

Lead applicant: Prof. Daniel Kübler (UZH); co-applicants: Prof. Anke Tresch (FORS/UNIL), Prof. Marc Bühlmann (UniBE), Prof. Denise Traber (UniBS), Dr. Lionel Marquis (UNIL).

Project duration: 1 February 2023 – 31 January 2027

The ISSP is glad to announce the publication of the first partial data release of the ISSP 2020 Environment IV (ZA7650_v1.0.0), including data from 14 countries (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Philippines, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Thailand, and Taiwan).

Central themes of the ISSP 2020 are attitudes towards environment related issues, such as environmental protection, respondents´ behavior and respondents´ preferences regarding governmental measures on environmental protection.

Data and documentation on this release can be found here:

https://www.gesis.org/en/issp/modules/issp-modules-by-topic/environment/2020

The European Social Survey (ESS) announces that its data and documentation will only be accessible through a new ESS Data Portal from Monday 30 May onwards.

The new data portal will allow users to search and download European Social Survey data on 18,000 questions and variables contained in 60 downloadable data files. This service is a work in progress, to improve the access to ESS data.

Access the portal here: https://ess-search.nsd.no/

Swiss ESS data

The ESS Data Portal includes all Swiss ESS data. In addition, the ESS data from Switzerland can be obtained via SWISSUbase, the Swiss research data service for the archiving and sharing of research data.

http://swissubase.ch

For detailed information on the new ESS data access portal, consult this news.

SHARE, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, is a research infrastructure for studying the effects of health, social, economic and environmental policies over the life-course of European citizens and beyond. In Switzerland, SHARE is conducted by FORS and the University of Lausanne.

In its SHARE-ERIC Council Meeting on 17 May 2022, the members of the SHARE-ERIC Council therefore unanimously adopted the decision to extend the duration of SHARE-ERIC beyond 2024.

Foundation for the Council’s decision and a first step to long-term sustainability was the creation of the SHARE Berlin Institute  in March 2022, which will house the international coordination of SHARE. Both processes – the move of SHARE from Munich to Berlin with the founding of the SHARE Berlin Institute and the continuation of SHARE-ERIC beyond 2024 – are key steps to sustain the SHARE research infrastructure.

Read the entire press release: http://www.share-project.org/home0/news/article/share-becomes-long-term.html

Lamprecht & Stamm conducted a study on the impact of the pandemic on volunteering on behalf of the Migros Culture Percentage and with data from the FORS COVID19-MOSAiCH study.

People who volunteer have weathered the pandemic better in several ways than those who do not do any volunteering. Although not every person who volunteers is more trusting of political and social institutions, they are more satisfied with their lives, receive more social support, are less socially isolated and suffer fewer bouts of depression.

More information on the study

The summary of the study

Further information on the MOSAiCH survey.

The SWISS Houshold Panel SHP has just published wave 22.

You can find all the data sets on our platform SWISSUbase (Living in Switzerland Waves 1-22 + Covid 19 data).

Wave 22 contains the two modules Social participation and Political behavior and values and three new questions on feelings towards LGBTIQ+ individuals.

Data access

You can access the new data here: https://doi.org/10.48573/h4k0-2g41

The 2021 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 becoming increasingly important to enable and facilitate research and that FORS rightly contributes to the construction, connection and operation of research infrastructures in a variety of ways.

Consult the FORS Annual Report 2021.

SWISSUbase, the new research data service for the archiving and sharing of research data was launched for the social sciences community on December 14, 2021. FAIR compliant, SWISSUbase provides archiving aligned with international standards; multi-lingual search capability; connectivity with European Research Infrastructures such as CESSDA for the social sciences; and support and consultation for data management and sharing.

SWISSUbase replaces the original FORSbase for the social sciences and will be expanded to include additional disciplines. The objective of SWISSUbase is to ensure that research data and metadata across different disciplines are preserved and accessible for the long-term.

Explore accessing and depositing data on SWISSUbase.

To receive more news and updates on SWISSUbase, you can subscribe directly on your SWISSUbase account profile.

For more information, contact support@swissubase.ch

Save the date ! A live webinar will take place on March 31 (1-2 pm) to present SWISSUbase to the Swiss social sciences community. Registration for the webinar will open soon.

After a very successful 2021 edition, we are happy to publish the 26th Summer School programme.

The Summer School in Social Science Methods has been conceived for those who feel the need to refresh, deepen and widen their methodological knowledge and skills, whatever their professional situation: student, researcher or practitioner.

Even in COVID-19 times, researchers should take care of improving your methodological skills: we guarantee the organization of the 26th Summer School again this year. Our goal is to organize it in presence but should the situation require it, the summer school will also switch to remote mode.

Read the USI COVID-19 Protection provisions

Register here!

Organised by USI, supported by FORS.

We are happy to announce the release of the MOSAiCH/ISSP 2021 data on “Health and Health Care” and related topics, fielded in spring 2021.

The data and documentation on this release can be found here: https://www.swissubase.ch/fr/catalogue/studies/20040/17948/overview

The thematic focus of the 2021 edition lies on “Health and Health Care II”, the current module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) which is repeated for the second time. This international part is supplemented by selected socio-demographic questions, as well as a module composed of Switzerland specific questions.

Check out our latest guides on survey methods and data management written by our experts at FORS.

Our latest guides discuss the topic of data protection in connection with legal considerations for research in Switzerland, the notion of replication in the social sciences and the idea representativeness of surveys and its analysis.

Representativeness of surveys and its analysis (FORS Guide N°15), Michael Ochsner

Replication in the social sciences (FORS Guide N°16), Marieke Heers

Data protection: legal considerations for research in Switzerland (FORS Guide N°17), Pablo Diaz

All FORS Guides can be consulted here: https://forscenter.ch/publications/fors-guides/

Published in the Journal of Economics and Statistics in 2021, Robin Tillmann and colleagues describe the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) as an ongoing, unique, large-scale, nationally representative, longitudinal study in Switzerland (N = 9828 households and N = 15,882 persons interviewed in 2020). Collecting data on households and individuals since 1999, the SHP aims to provide both continuity and innovation in measurement and data collection. Examples of innovation are the combination of retrospective and prospective longitudinal data, the combination of survey modes notably in refreshment samples and additional studies oversampling specific population groups.

This article provides an overview of the SHP – focusing on the survey’s key design features, content, data collection and adjustments, possibilities for cross-national comparisons, data use and accomplishments. Read more.

On December 3, 50 researchers discussed the advantages and challenges of implementing the Generations and Gender Program (GGP, (https://www.ggp-i.org) in Switzerland as part of the SWISS RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES ROADMAP 2023. The proposal for GGP implementation is currently prepared by a team of researchers at the University of Lausanne in collaboration with the Swiss Center of Expertise in Social Sciences (FORS).

Support letter

To show that this endeavor is relevant to the whole Swiss research community, your support is of utmost importance.

We therefore ask you to sign the following support letter which will be attached to the Swiss GGP application: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dtpQO4DhGROSNB5czXY-q5av-P8cBRGI/edit

Deadline: Early January 2022

Detailed information on the GGP program and the presentation slides of the December 3 event:

https://forscenter.ch/generations-gender-programme/

 

The ISSP is glad to announce the publication of a second partial data release of the ISSP 2019 Social Inequality V (ZA7600_v2.0.0), including data from Switzerland and 21 other countries.

The data and documentation on this release can be found here: https://www.gesis.org/en/issp/modules/issp-modules-by-topic/social-inequality/2019

Data access including download in SPSS or Stata format, is offered online via GESIS Search at:
https://search.gesis.org/research_data/ZA7600?lang=en

CESSDA is seeking qualified candidates for the full-time position of Director, starting in March 2022.

Director of CESSDA

The director is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Scientific Officer and legal representative of CESSDA ERIC, leading the team and organisation.

Find out more about the position: