New project to develop international web panel
The European Social Survey (ESS) is coordinating a new project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to help develop a web panel that operates across continents.
Almost £159,000 has been awarded to the ESS HQ – based at City St George’s, University of London – for the project: Developing a blueprint for an international 'web-first' panel.
The project aims to provide the basis for the establishment of an online survey simultaneously conducted in countries within and beyond Europe.
To help build the capacity, infrastructure and funding model for the panel, the ESS will work with survey projects based in Australia, South Korea and the United States.
The ESS already has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in place with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (United States) and Survey Research Centre at Sungkyunkwan University (South Korea).
An MoU was agreed between the ESS and Social Research Centre at Australian National University from 2019-23.
Work to strengthen links with global partners received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871063.
All three organisations will work with the ESS HQ on this new project to better understand how a large-scale, probability-based, input-harmonised international panel could be implemented.
The global survey will build on the success of the CROss-National Online Survey (CRONOS) Panel, fielded in three countries (2016-18) and in 12 countries (2021-23) under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 funding programme.
CRONOS-3 is currently being implemented in 11 European countries as part of the Horizon Europe project, Infra4NextGen, and includes five waves of 90 questions centred around the European Union’s NextGenerationEU aims ‘to build a greener, more digital and more resilient future’.
A nationally representative sample of respondents are initially asked to complete the survey online or, in efforts to include the offline population, add their responses to a paper questionnaire sent via the postal system.
The year-long project began on 1 August 2024.
Professor Rory Fitzgerald, Director of the ESS, said: "The ESS team are very excited to be looking beyond Europe as we continue to build the CRONOS panel.
"Many challenges such as climate change, immigration and health inequalities require an international perspective. However existing cross-national data collection at a global level is rather slow, relies on traditional data collection techniques, is often not fully input harmonised and includes only cross-sectional measurement.
"We are scoping a panel that would deliver cross-national longitudinal data collected faster and via an input harmonised approach to maximise data quality. This panel the potential to introduce a step change in cross-national data collection at a pan-continent level."