The second conference of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) will be held June 25-29, 2007 in Prague, Czech Republic. A large variety of topics will be discussed, among which is "Harmonization of Survey Data"
As more and more surveys are conducted either across countries and / or across time the need for strategies and procedures that yield comparable data, i.e. harmonized data, is increasing. Current practices in cross-national surveys vary widely: While, for example, the European Social Survey aims at standardizing the whole data production process as much as possible other studies, such as the International Social Survey Programme or even more so the Com-parative Study of Electoral Systems rely mostly on defining target measures without prescrib-ing the procedures by which these measures are reached, i.e. output harmonization.
The session invites presentations dealing with any aspect involved in the harmonization of survey data: harmonization of measures; harmonization of instruments; harmonization of data collection, data editing and data documentation. In addition presentations focusing on evaluat-ing the level of harmonization achieved in a given dataset would be greatly appreciated.
The session is organized by Peter Granda, ICPSR, University of Michigan, USA; peterg@umich.edu Christof Wolf, ZUMA, Germany; wolf@zuma-mannheim.de
Please send abstracts of around 250 (max. 500) words to Christof Wolf (Mannheim, Germany): wolf@zuma-mannheim.de by May 1, 2007.
Further Information on the Conference can be found on the conference homepage
http://esra.sqp.nl/esra/conferences/2007/