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

To the registration.

This year, once again, we are looking forward to welcoming you for two weeks of learning in August at the beautiful campus of Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano!

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/

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 17, 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 – 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

A new study on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our population was published recently. Based on the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), Marieke Heers and Oliver Lipps addressed the question which parents were most challenged by having to ensure homeschooling responsibilities during the first semi-lockdown and how homeschooling affected different dimensions of their well-being. Almost one fifth of parents reported being sometimes overwhelmed by homeschooling obligations for their children. Women, mid-aged and lower-educated individuals as well as those with young children and a lower income were particularly overwhelmed. However, being sometimes overwhelmed by homeschooling did not cause changes in life satisfaction, stress and negative affect. Yet, it led to a decrease in positive affect.

Interested in more information? Find the full article here.

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 ISSP is glad to announce the publication of the final release of the international ISSP 2019 Social Inequality V data file (ZA7600_v3.0.0), including data from Switzerland and 28 other countries from six continents.

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

In parallel with the final release, the ISSP organizes its first User Conference on Social Inequality on December 12, 2022. Registration is free, but mandatory:
https://issp.org/about-issp/issp-user-conference/

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/

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.