Conferences

In preparing the Blueprint for the European Social Survey in the last years of the previous century, the need for providing context was foreseen as a background to survey data: It was .. “ well known from earlier comparative survey research that in some fields, such as electoral analysis, individual reactions to certain questions will be influenced by contextual factors and by significant events. For example, a question about the subjective interest in politics of a respondent may well be answered differently at the height of a national campaign for a general election compared to a time when no election is imminent.” When fieldwork takes place during elections in some countries and not in others, possible effects of elections can hamper comparison over time and across countries. This can especially be a problem because ESS is foreseen to become an important asset for historical micro analysis. For this reason, during each round of the ESS and event database is constructed, comprising information on major events during fieldwork.

The presentation uses one type of events only, namely the presence of an election during fieldwork. It analyses whether interest in politics and news, as reflected by media use devoted to these topics, is higher in periods close to national elections. As will turn out, there is no clear relationship between the presence of elections and more attention to news and politics in the media. This can be due to a lack of relevant information in the data, or to the fact that closeness to the election date is not the deciding factor, but crucial heights in the election campaign.