Abstract
Analysis of survey responses to the same questions in Australia and the United Kingdom will be presented at this latest European Social Survey (ESS) online event.
The Australian National University (ANU) replicated items from our biennial survey though its Social Research Centre’s probability-based panel, Life in Australia.
163 questions included in Round 9 (2018/19) of the ESS were fielded on the Australian panel between 17 February and 2 March 2020.
At our latest event, academics will present their analysis of some of this attitudinal data collected in Australia via Life in Australia and the UK through the ESS.
Ben Edwards and Nicholas Biddle (ANU) will discuss the ANU COVID-19 Impact Monitoring Program and the role ESS measures of social trust, social contact and income played in its formation.
Julie Lee (University of Western Australia) and Hester van Herk (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) will present analysis of responses to the human values scale section of the survey fielded in Australia, the Netherlands and the UK.
Ruxandra Comanaru (City, University of London) will assess data collected via Life in Australia and the ESS to compare attitudes in Australia and the UK on a range of topics.
The event will be chaired by the ESS Director, Professor Rory Fitzgerald (City, University of London). An open Q&A will follow the presentations.
ESS HQ is based at City, University of London.
8.10-8.50am: The ANU COVID-19 Impact Monitoring Program
Insights from ESS measures of social trust, social contact and income adequacy
The COVID-19 pandemic is the most significant health, social and economic shock of this century.
In this presentation, Ben Edwards and Nicholas Biddle (ANU) will document the role that fielding ESS questions in February 2020 played in establishing a baseline for the ANU's COVID-19 Impact Monitoring Program.
This program has generated numerous policy insights over the course of the pandemic - this presentation will focus on three applications:
- How social trust was implicated in the high rates of vaccination in Australia and how findings from these analyses influenced Australian government policy
- Tracking longitudinal changes in the ESS measures of social trust, social contact and income adequacy over many waves across the pandemic
- Linking information from the Oxford University COVID-19 Government Response Tracker to the longitudinal panel to examine how changes in the policy stringency influenced changes in trust, social contact and income adequacy.
About the speakers
Professor Nicholas Biddle is Associate Director of the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, head of the methods and survey program in the centre and lead researcher for the Policy Experiments Lab. He has a Bachelor of Economics (Hons.) from the University of Sydney and a Master of Education from Monash University.
He also has a PhD in Public Policy from the ANU where he wrote his thesis on the benefits of and participation in education of Indigenous Australians.
He previously held a Senior Research Officer and Assistant Director position in the Methodology Division of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. He is currently a Fellow of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute.
Professor Ben Edwards is a Professor of Child and Youth Development and Longitudinal Studies.
Ben led the implementation of ESS in Australia in 2020. He is Principal Investigator of GENERATION, a new decade long study following over 15,000 students as they transition to life beyond school.
He Directed the ANU partnership with Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) subnational project that has collected detailed data on government policy responses to the pandemic.
Ben's research focusses on how early childhood and school education and neighbourhood disadvantage influence children and youth life chances and the intergenerational impacts of natural disasters and traumatic events.
8.50-9.10am: Within and across country insights about how human values influence beliefs in the ESS
A comparison of samples from Australia, the UK, and the Netherlands
Human values have been measured in the European Social Survey since its start in 2002 and provide a way to explain differences in beliefs between people and countries.
The inclusion of Australian respondents in 2020 provides an important comparative benchmark for Australia and an important regional addition for Europe.
In this presentation, Julie Lee (University of Western Australia) and Hester van Herk (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) will discuss differences in beliefs (e.g., about trust in institutions and about attitudes toward gays and lesbians) within and across countries and explain these using human values and religiosity.
They found differences in value-religiosity relationships at both the individual and country levels when comparing the samples from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.
In all three countries, more conservative values determine the beliefs examined over and above religiosity (despite the positive relationships between conservative values and religiosity).
Furthermore, using quantile regression, they will show that when beliefs are stronger (i.e. at the 60th and 80th percentiles of the distribution of beliefs) the relationships between conservative values/religiosity and beliefs are much stronger than when these beliefs are weaker (i.e., at the 20th and 40th percentiles of the distribution of beliefs), at least in Australia.
Differences and similarities between countries will be discussed.
About the speakers
Professor Julie Anne Lee is the Director of Research and Research Training at the University of Western Australia Business School.
She is also the Founding Director of the Centre for Human and Cultural Values at The University of Western Australia. Her recent research focuses on values theory and measurement, and on how values influence behaviour in adults and children.
Professor Dr. Hester van Herk is a multidisciplinary researcher and full professor of Cross-Cultural Marketing Research at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.
Her recent research focuses on antecedents and consequences of personal and cultural values of consumer behaviour in developed and emerging markets and on research methodology providing insight into differences and similarities between survey responses from different nations and cultural groups.
Several of her scientific and practice-oriented publications in which cross-national comparisons are made uses the European Social Survey.
9.10-9.30am: Comparing Life in Australia and ESS Round 9 data in the UK
One of the main aims of establishing international collaborations between the European Social Survey and other organisations with a similar ethos and goals is to allow us to evaluate the differences and similarities in attitudes and behaviours globally.
Fielding the ESS questionnaire in Australia on the Life in Australia survey offers the opportunity to compare data from the UK and other ESS countries with data collected in Australia around the same time, using the same questions and a similar methodology.
This presentation will discuss a comparison between UK ESS Round 9 data and Australia on variables such as trust in institutions, health and wellbeing.
It will also focus on how the samples of respondents in each country compare given the differences in data collection methods used.
About the speaker
Ruxandra Comanaru (City, University of London) is a Research Fellow at the European Social Survey HQ based at City, University of London.
In this role, she is primarily focusing on the methodological issues around switching from the face-to-face mode of data collection to self-completion.
She is also working on the European Commission-funded SUSTAIN 2 project to maintain and enhance the collaboration between ESS and other similar organisations globally.
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