26-27  November 2004
Luxembourg

Access to Quality Comparative Data for European
Socio-Economic Research

The Network of Economic and Social Science Infrastructures in Europe (NESSIE) was launched in 2001.  It is funded under the European Commission “Improving the Social Science Infrastructure” Program.  Its aim is to bring together representatives of the leading social science institutes and research communities to identify tasks that will make access to large data collections in the social sciences easier and to make recommendations to improve their comparability across Europe. It works through a programme of active exchange, Roundtables and through the implementation of web-based tools for information exchange and information access. Identification of areas for future research, and research funding, will be an important outcome of its activities.

NESSIE has held three Roundtables since its inception, each concentrating on a major aspect of data access for comparative research in Europe. This final fourth NESSIE Roundtable will provide the opportunity to consider the findings of the first three Roundtables and to refine and expand the recommendations that resulted from them for future action in strengthening the European social science infrastructure.  

The European database is constantly expanding, but locating and gaining access to comparable socio-economic data on Europe is often not straightforward.  Roundtable One addressed the issues of data availability and access, and the organisation of the data collection process. Gaps in data availability, the level of organisation of the social science disciplines in terms of data policy, creation and access and the levels of cooperation and data sharing existing within and between the disciplines were addressed by a panel of scholars, data providers and funding agencies.  A series of recommendations for further action resulted from their considerations.

In Roundtable Two, the improvement of technical access to European socio-economic data and data harmonisation were the subjects of discussion by representatives of projects developing some of the more innovative and effective systems for comparative data in Europe.  Participants touched on many aspects of these technical developments, including conceptual mapping of key concepts of the European database, emerging standards for data definition languages, and new software approaches to support recoding and harmonisation. 

In spite of development of more user-friendly access systems, the data being delivered often suffers from only partial or even misleading levels of comparability and standardisation.  Some progress has been made in improving comparability over time, but there is little inter-project comparability.  Measurement experts from some of the leading continuous European data collection programmes also discussed in Roundtable Two different measurement and coding approaches and looked for lines of convergence in making comparable data. Experts from the data services discussed efforts and methods to make data more comparable ex post.

Roundtable Three focussed on the legal and ethical framework within which empirical research operates throughout Europe.  Both scientists and society agree that they require research to further science, knowledge and by extension, individual welfare, but there are often difficulties in balancing the potentially competing needs of science with those of society. The main issue addressed was how European common legislative framework, in particular the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, affects the possibilities for empirical research. Legal experts on the legislation and those attempting to establish that balance met together with data producers and data disseminators to assess the probable impacts of the practical solutions chosen by individual countries to satisfy the demands for privacy and for protection of confidentiality on the conduct of data-based social science research in the future. 

The findings of the first three Roundtables on these major issues were addressed in this final NESSIE Roundtable 4. Invited commentators considered the outcomes of previous Roundtables, provided their own commentary on the current state of the art in Europe, and made suggestions as to ways in which the recommendations of each of the Roundtables can best be implemented.  In addition, those concerned with establishing Europe-wide data policies from international organisations including the European Commission, and the European Science Foundation) made short presentations of their own activities and plans in these areas. 

The Roundtable discussion was informed by the results of Europe-wide deliberations and recommendations of RISSH (Research Infrastructures in Social Sciences and Humanities), a Working Group of the European Commission’s European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures  (ESFRI).  This Working Group was set up to identify the precise strategic issues that need to be tackled at a European level within the humanities and sciences.  Its draft report, entitled the Blueprint for the European Resource Observatory for the Humanities and Social Sciences (EROHS) was presented at the Roundtable.