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The European Social Survey (ESS) is conducted in Belgium under the name “Europees Sociaal Onderzoek.” It is a scientific survey (in Belgium led by KU Leuven) that has been conducted every two years since 2001 in more than 30 European countries. We are conducting 1,750 interviews of about an hour in 2021-2022. Respondents receive a letter and a leaflet in advance, then the interviewer asks at the door for participation.
ESS studies what people think about society and the social changes that affect our lives. The survey gives people a unique opportunity to express their views on topics such as politics, the environment and migration.
ESS aims to be a reliable source of data for scientists, policymakers and politicians. Some examples: between 2003 and 2018, over 4,500 scientific articles were written based on the data. In 2019, more than 1,000 articles in various media have been published based on ESS.
ESS:
- promotes scientific debate
- gives input to public policy
- achieves and disseminates higher standards in international comparative research in the social sciences, e.g. questionnaire construction, sampling, data collection and increasing the purity and reliability of survey questions.
The survey data are also applied for training European social science researchers in comparative quantitative measurement and analysis. The results of the ESS are publicly available. For a short and clear explanation, please also refer to this less than four-minute video on YouTube. The following link provides specific information about the ESS in Belgium.
