ESRA Congress in Lausanne

Published on Wednesday, 07 December 2011 03:34

The fourth Conference of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) took place on 17-23 July 2011 in Lausanne. The ESRA is a young organization, which was established in 2004 on the initiative of Dutch researcher and statistician Mr Willem Saris. Mr Saris has initiated many projects, without which modern research would not be what it is at present. He is particularly willing to take up the challenges in the development of new technologies which are presented to researchers in social sciences. At the beginning of the 90s he laid the foundations for computer programs which assisted in conducting telephone interviews. It is no surprise that companies from all over Europe have been travelling to Holland for software for CATI research.

More importantly, however, Mr Saris, like perhaps no-one else, understands the significance of the links between researchers in different countries for the development of social research, and particularly among young people, who are most open to new ideas. He also established the group which created the method of data analysis known today as MTMM (Multitrait—Multimethod) from scratch. The ESRA was Mr Saris' next initiative. The problems of conducting empirical research have been marginalized for years by theorists and researchers of international organizations of sociologists in academic centres. In the meantime, an increasing input in the development of research methodology is coming from researchers working outside of universities: in public administration, local government, NGOs, and also market research companies. In order to give them a voice Mr Saris decided to create an independent organization.

From its very beginnings, the ESRA has developed in an unusually dynamic way. Conferences, whose main goal is to promote international co-operation, are organized every two years. 650 researchers from all over the world were present in Lausanne this year, and for some time the ESRA has not been restricted only to Europe. It is difficult to put geographical constraints on spontaneous co-operation. In Lausanne this year we had representatives from North and South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. The inexorable law of globalization means that the representation of European researchers is growing smaller from conference to conference.

As many as 600 papers were presented at the conference! This would not have been possible without the goodwill of Université de Lausanne, which made its facilities available for the meeting. This kind of support is essential as the conference is not a commercial undertaking. Researchers come to the conference in order to share with others what they have been doing and, also, to find out what others are working on. The ESRA does not limit the number speeches at its conferences; this is decided by the needs of the participants. It is a conference for researchers, led by researchers; it is like a holiday for them. If the number of speeches is large, then a greater number of parallel sessions are organized.

The spontaneous way in which papers are presented means that the themes of the conference are a reliable reflection of what is happening in the world of research methodology. For some time now the greatest challenge for researchers has been the growing reluctance of people to take part in research studies – apparent in the high percentage of refusals. This is why researchers are attempting to create techniques for collecting data which would limit, as far as possible, any intrusion into the privacy of study subjects, and, at the same time, would offer the possibility of choosing the time, place and form in which participation would take place. For this reason most speeches dealt with the strategy for organizing research known as mixed mode. This strategy is based on using different techniques of communication between the researcher and research subjects in parallel. The whole set of techniques includes classic interviews, questionnaires, telephone interviews, and online questionnaires. These techniques must be implemented in such a way that the results obtained are equivalent. The suitability of a proposed research technique has an influence not only on whether the subject agrees to participate in the study, but also on the degree of engagement in the study and whether answers are reliable or thought-through.

Among the speeches dedicated to the mixed mode strategy the paper on the subject of research via the Internet met with particular interest. This technique, until recently treated with reserve due to the difficulty of selecting a representative sample group or the excessively superficial nature of contact with the research subject, has currently become of paramount importance for many researchers. Access to the Internet is growing all the time, and communicating electronically is an increasingly natural phenomenon. The importance of these issues can be seen due to the fact that, among other things, it was the subject of the one inaugural lecture of the conference. Professor Roger Tourangeau (University of Maryland) presented the benefits and drawbacks connected with including visual materials in online questionnaires. This option provides opportunities unavailable to researchers using traditional methods for collecting data. Nevertheless, it tends to make the study subject think in concrete categories of what they observe in the pictures or films presented. The problem of generalization of the stimulus by some study groups may lead to an inability to compare the results of data collected using other techniques. Therefore, creative exploitation of the possibilities created by the Internet requires a great deal more experimentation.

In such a short report it is not possible to even scratch the surface of everything that was said at the conference. We would direct anyone who is interested to the ESRA portal, where abstracts of all of the speeches given can be found (http://surveymethodology.eu).

It must be mentioned, however, that many speeches dealt directly or indirectly with educational research. Representatives of consortia implementing key international research projects in this area, such as PISA and PIAAC, were present at the conference which provided an opportunity to compare experiences concerning the problems with carrying out such research in different countries. Sometimes this kind of informal conversation has a greater impact on the improvement of international comparative research methodology than the conclusions of regular conferences with researchers representing countries involved in these projects. Numerous representatives of national institutes conducting educational research were also present at the conference. They talked about their experiences and difficulties in carrying out different types of research, including panel research, which is only in its early stages of development in Poland. Other important questions were also discussed. Representatives of the German federal Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung in Bonn talked about methods of accessing educational research results of institutes and specialists involved in the process of improving educational systems. In short, there were many opportunities to share experiences and also to establish contacts for long-term co-operation.

Zbyszek Sawiński (one of 650 participants in the ESRA Conference in Lausanne)