Welcome and introduction
by Ekkehard Mochmann
University of Cologne (Reps)
Address by Nessie Coordinator

The European data base is constantly growing. In spite of the increasing quantity of data, comparability is not growing at the same pace. Even though some progress can be observed re. comparability over time within large continuous data collection programs, comparability between projects is still missing.

In order to improve inter – project comparability, measurement experts from the leading continuous European data collection programs (e.g. the Household Panel Studies, Eurobarometers, European Social Survey, European representatives of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) and the European Values Studies) were invited to discuss different measurement and coding approaches and to look for lines of convergence in making comparable data. Experts from the data services discussed efforts and methods to make data comparable ex post.

Ruben Mohedano-Brethes

European Values Study

Wolfgang Jagodzinski
Loek Halman
Jaques Hagenaars
Hermann Dülmer

ISSP

Rolf Uher
Janet Harkness

European Social Survey

European Community Household Panel

Harmonisation Projects Using Comparative Data

Marcia Taylor

Standard Demographies

Juergen Hoffmeyer-Zlotnick

Value Added

Summing up

Access to Data 

Part II:  Improving Technical Access to European Socio-Economic Data 
While emerging data policies are discussed, much progress has been made to improve technical access to socio-economic data. Several efforts are coordinated under the CESSDA umbrella. The roundtable presented the state of the technical development in this area. This included NESSTAR, MADIERA, MetaDater, SDA and ZA-Codebook-Explorer. Emerging standards for data definition languages were discussed (DDI et al.). Experienced data users were brought in to emphasize the users needs perspective.

The software discussion was complemented by perspectives on emerging data policies, broadband technologies and conceptual mapping of key concepts of the European database (e.g. LIMBER, specialised domain thesauri).

Progress in the conceptual development can be supported by new software approaches. An example is the ISSP-Wizard, currently being developed by the GESIS Institutes in Germany. Tools for conceptual mapping and tools to support recoding and harmonisation were discussed.

Summing up and
Recommendations from RT II
End of Roundtable