City-based European Social Survey (ESS ERIC) receives European Commission funding to coordinate youth policy and European recovery data project.
By City Press Office (City Press Office), Published
Key policy issues in the European Union could be solved by bringing together the wealth of data scattered across the region.
To line this existing data up, the European Commission is injecting €9.75m into Infra4NextGen, a new project aimed at bringing together key social science findings to inform EU youth policy and recovery policy.
Due to launch next March, the project will be coordinated by the European Social Survey European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ESS ERIC) which is headquartered at City, University of London.
ESS ERIC is a pan-European research infrastructure which provides freely accessible data for academics, policymakers, civil society and the wider public.
The Infra4NextGen project will support the NextGenerationEU programme, which is a post-Covid recovery plan to make Europe greener, more digital, healthier, stronger and more equitable.
The project will begin by compiling existing data – such as the Eurobarometer and the European Social Survey (ESS) – to create an inventory. The data will then be analysed and summarised in a dedicated online portal.
With the gaps identified, new data will be collected to create an educational tool, to provide training materials, and to plan workshops with young people aged 18-34 across four European countries along the five NextGenerationEU themes.
There are six affiliated entities involved in the project: City and ESS ERIC (UK); GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (Germany); University of Essex (UK); University of Innsbruck (Austria); University of Ljubljana (Slovenia); and University of Vienna (Austria).
Professor Rory Fitzgerald, Director of ESS ERIC and Coordinator of Infra4NextGen, welcomed the award:
Building and analysing an inventory of EU data
In each key theme of the NextGenerationEU programme, partner organisations will initially produce an inventory of relevant items on cross-national surveys.
The inventory will be compiled by City (ESS ERIC); the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), for the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS); and University of Milan (for the European Values Study).Harmonised and merged extracts from existing datasets that reduce the burden on analysts and increase sample sizes will be produced by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (representing CESSDA ERIC).
Existing data will then by analysed and summarised to produce a series of policy-relevant tabulations and visualisations with commentary presented in a dedicated online portal.
Post-collection weighting of the panel data will be undertaken by Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex (representing ESS ERIC).
Next steps: developing new data, tools and workshops for the future of EU youth policy
New data on each NextGenEU theme will be collected and made rapidly available through the established CROss-National Online Survey (CRONOS) Panel. This panel will be administered by Centerdata.
Sikt - Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (representing ESS ERIC) will ensure that the CRONOS data is processed and easily accessible by the research community through a dedicated Data Portal with all data organised by NextGenerationEU theme.
Data collection via the CRONOS 3 panel will be conducted by beneficiaries in 11 countries: Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna, IHS; Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, ICS-UL; Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences; KU Leuven; National Centre for Social Research; Sciences Po; Social Science Research Center, HUN-REN TK; Umeå University; University of Ljubljana; University of Iceland; and University of Turku.
The work on compiling existing and collecting new data will also be undertaken by Cardiff University (Make it Green); Bielefeld University (Make it Digital); NTNU: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Make it Healthy); Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Make it Strong); and TÁRKI Social Research Institute and University of Exeter (Make it Equal).
King’s College London (UK) will use evidence from the partners working on each area to plan and schedule deliberative workshops with young people (aged 18-34) in four countries.
An educational tool (E-NextGen) allowing data to be used in classrooms and by the general public will be implemented by European Association of Geographers EUROGEO; and Tilburg University representing the European Values Study.
The tool will include interactive maps, infographics, blog posts, short research notes and the ability for users to position themselves on the five themes.
Comprehensive training materials related to all project outputs and NextGenerationEU areas will be generated by CESSDA ERIC; City and ESS ERIC; GESIS (CESSDA ERIC), KNAW; ADP – Slovenian Social Science Data Archives at the University of Ljubljana (CESSDA ERIC); University of Milan; AUSSDA – The Austrian Social Science Data Archive with contributions from University of Vienna (CESSDA ERIC) and University of Innsbruck (CESSDA ERIC).
This will include online training, a series of 17 webinars, nine workshops, and a short video series with demonstrations, tutorials/guides and research discussions.
Learn more about the Infra4NextGen project and its beneficiaries by visiting the ESS ERIC website.
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