Conferences

Over the last years, the Internet has gained a key role in the dissemination of survey data. Today most of the major cross-national surveys like the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the European Social Survey (ESS), the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), the European Value Study (EVS) and the World Value Survey (WVS) all make their data available over the Internet.

The traditional distribution of survey data has been centered around two pillars; the data file and its codebook. Today we note that the traditional distribution of data and codebooks are replaced by new forms of dissemination where data, metadata and analytical tools are integrated. Nesstar, SDA, JD-systems are a few examples of data dissemination and analysis software used by some of the above mentioned surveys.

In addition to individual software systems several initiatives have been taken to create overarching structures (portals) to ease access to the large amounts of empirical data available around the world. These initiatives, like the CESSDA portal (http://www.cessda.org/), MADIERA (http://www.madiera.net/) and the Dataverse Network (http://thedata.org/) vary to a large extent in their required degree of standardisation and harmonisation from the data providers.

In this diverse landscape of dissemination systems, on-line tools and portals how are the needs of the research community met?

In this context we would like to invite presentations on the following suggested topics:

• Different dissemination and analysis software systems: what are their current capabilities and what do they foresee as future developments?

• To what extent do existing on-line dissemination and analysis systems support comparisons across time and space?

• To what extent do these systems support the combination of micro, macro and contextual data and facilitate multi level analysis?

• In different study designs, what are the most relevant metadata and how can they be linked to the data in a user friendly manner?

• From the user perspective, is it an advantage to standardise the online dissemination of survey data? We are thinking of the standardisation at the level of:

o portals

o dissemination software

o metadata

o post harmonisation of data

In this session we would like to get feedback on these topics from representatives of different dissemination software systems, archives and other survey data distributors. We would also very much welcome perspectives from users having experience with use of on-line access and dissemination systems.