Conferences

One of the reasons why event data are collected alongside the European Social Survey is that it was expected that, 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. This could be important because general elections are national events that occur periodically and not at the same time in different countries. Therefore, they could influence survey outcomes in a way which is not uniform across the countries in the ESS and over time. As the ESS will in the long run become an important asset for historical micro analysis information on elections and other major events has to be available. As a consequence, from the beginning an event data base has been built in the ESS.

After three rounds of survey data collection, it can be analysed whether political interest is influenced by the presence of national parliamentary elections. This has been checked not by using data from the event database but by directly by relating political interest to the date of the elections. Political interest has been defined here as the share of media use devoted to news, politics and current affairs. The presentation will show that the national elections do not result in a clearly observable shift towards more attention for news and politics. A number of factors behind this will be discussed.