UCD researchers: Professor Philip Boland, Professor Pat Clancy, Dr Pauline Faughnan, Dr Niamh Hardiman, Dr Mary Kelly, Dr Gerald Mills, Dr Michael O’Connell, Dr Máire Nic Giolla Phádraig, Dr Diane Payne, Professor Richard Sinnott, Dr Joan Tiernan, Professor Conor K. Ward, Dr Nessa Winston.
TCD researchers: Professor Michael Marsh, Professor Michael Laver, Professor Kevin O’Rourke, Hilary Tovey.
Under this programme, ISSC is co-ordinate Irish participation in the European Social Survey (ESS) and in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and is setting up a qualitative opinion research facility dedicated to methodological development in this field. The establishment of these resources will make it possible for ISSC researchers, in collaboration with colleagues in TCD and in the ESRI, to pursue systematic comparative research on political culture, political participation, local, national and supranational identity, attitudes to minorities, attitudes to inequality, environmental attitudes, the extent and implications of political knowledge and mass experiences of and attitudes to globalisation.
The European Social Survey (ESS)
ISSC will conduct the European Social Survey in Ireland. This study will commenced in November 2001 with FP5 support for the European-level costs. The main TCD collaborators in this project are Professors Michael Laver and Michael Marsh. Professor Sinnott from UCD will be the Irish ESS principal investigator. The significance of Ireland's involvement in the ESS is greatly enhanced by the fact that the Irish Social and Political Attitudes Survey funded under PRTLI–1 has become the prototype of the planned ESS. As a result of this, the Irish research team is closely involved in the design and testing of the ESS questionnaire. This means that it will be possible to pursue Irish research concerns in a rigorous European framework that Irish researchers are helping to define;
The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP):
ISSP is an ongoing cross-national survey research collaboration in 34 countries. UCD is the Irish member of this consortium. The unique advantages of ISSP are the breadth of the countries involved, the specificity of its research themes and the length of its time series;
Qualitative Opinion Research:
In addition to mass surveys, scientific public opinion research requires in-depth interviewing carried out before and/or after the main survey. In conjunction with UCD’s Centre for Social and Organisational Psychology, it is proposed to develop a facility for carrying out work of this sort in support of a range of ISSC programmes. With a view to maximising the opportunities for comparative research and to forming international teams of researchers to develop modules for insertion in comparative surveys such as the ESS and the ISSP, ISSC will formalise its existing working relationships with: MZES and ZUMA (Mannheim); CREST/Nuffield (Oxford); Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques/CEVIPOV (Paris); CIRCAP (Siena); European University Institute (Florence); Institute for Social Research (University of Michigan); NORC (Chicago); Faculty of Law and Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. Leading international scholars in this area who will come to UCD include Jan van Deth, Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell, Gerard Grunberg, Peter Mohler, Jean Blondel, Pierangelo Isernia, Chris Achen, Takashi Inoguchi and Ikuo Kabashima. Visits are either short working-group sessions of several scholars preparing or completing a particular project or longer stays by single individuals conducting work that is of particular relevance to the ISSC programme.
