ESS Director visits University of Western Australia

Professor Rory Fitzgerald, the director of the European Social Survey (ESS), delivered a public lecture at the University of Western Australia in Perth on 19 February 2019.

Professor Fitzgerald delivered the lecture during a visit to Australian academics aimed at helping develop an Australian survey with similar specifications to the ESS.

As part of the visit, the ESS Director delivered a lecture at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth.

UWA Visiting Fellow, Professor Fitzgerald, used his lecture to outline the methodological challenges of fielding a survey cross-nationally.

He discussed cross-national measurement using social surveys and how the ESS has tried to address issues around survey sampling, questionnaire design, translation, fieldwork and data processing.

The ESS Director then presented some of his own substantive research – using our growing dataset – by combining responses collected over several ESS rounds.

Professor Fitzgerald explained how combining this data means that a significant sample size can be achieved for low representative groups, such a migrants.

By combining survey responses of migrants who have moved from eastern to western Europe, Professor Fitzgerald was able to determine overall attitudes towards homosexuality, and whether these attitudes change when migrants move to another country.

In the final part of the lecture, Professor Fitzgerald gave some examples of how the ESS has been used in academic articles, amongst teachers across the world and in influencing public policy.