Minutes

Foundational meeting

Minutes of the General Assembly of the European Survey Research Association,

held during the Barcelona Conference 22 August 2005 , 6.30 p.m. till 7.30 pm.

Temporary committee present: Willem Saris (Chairman), Peter Lynn, Albert Satorra and Rainer Schnell. Approximately 80 ESRA members present.

Activities

The following activities of the ESRA were discussed
- Conferences
  
  The members of the ESRA agreed with biannual conferences given that in between many different conferences are held some of which are also interesting for survey researchers, for example the IASS conference on data quality and the conference on Longitudinal surveys in Essex. The ESRA will provide information about these conferences and other activities through its newsletter. Ekaterina Markova suggested that the next conference could be held in Sofia. This proposal was highly appreciated but we have to wait to see if there will be also other proposals and compare the quality of the different proposals. The assembly thought that it is a good idea to have the next meeting in one of the new member states of the EU.
- An on line journal
  
  The assembly agreed with the proposal of the temporary committee that it would be good for the visibility of the association to start its own journal devoted to problems in survey research such as sampling, non-response, quality of measurement instruments and analysis of survey data. The committee mentioned that Rainer Schnell was quite sure that it would be possible to start on open access online journal without further costs for some years. The assembly agreed with this proposal but asked who will be the editor. The proposal was that Peter Lynn would be the editor and Rainer Schnell the co-editor while we would like to organize quite a large editorial board representative for the field. His proposal too was welcomed by the assembly.
- Courses : Workshops around the conferences
  
  There were different opinions on the need for courses but at this moment it did not seem opportune to organize special courses in survey methodology given the courses that were already organized by the ESF in the program Quantitative methods for the social sciences (QMSS) and by other organisations, including some regular summer schools. The proposal was made to organize only short workshops around the conferences and this proposal has been accepted by the Assembly.

Research committees

There was a general feeling of worry about the frequent use of access panels in commercial research. The use of these panels means that a basic principle of survey research, the probability sample, is disregarded. Given the wide spread use of this new approach it is necessary to study the possibilities and problems of this approach in detail. For this purpose cooperation will be asked from the IASS and maybe together an application for a grant of the ESF will be made. Also this activity was agreed by the General Assembly.

The structure of ESRA

The next topic discussed was whether the ESRA should remain independent or become a part of a related organization. The chairman reported that discussion about this issue were held with different organizations:
- The World Association for Opinion Research (WAPOR) does not have a structure which allows for regional subgroups.
- The International Association for Survey Statisticians (IASS) has proposed to its mother organisation to create a European section for survey research but this proposal was not decided upon but shifted to the next conference in 2007
- The European Association for Methodology (EAM) allows for thematic subgroups like a survey research group. So it was discussed at length in the committee of the ESRA whether it was a good idea to join this organisation. In the end it was decided that at least for the moment ESRA should remain independent in order to be more visible in the field. The fear was that in joining the EAM the level of statistical sophistication would lead many substantive survey researchers not to participate in the activities of ESRA.
The General Assembly agreed with this decision but it was understood that our activities should be coordinated with the other organisations mentioned above.

The election of the Committee of the ESRA

So far the following people had formed the temporary committee of the ESRA: Peter Lynn, Albert Satorra, Rainer Schnell, Hanspeter Kriesi, Willem Saris.
All these people indicated their willingness to continue as members of the committee of the ESRA, so the proposal was that all of them remain on the committee for a first term. It was also proposed that Katja Lozar Manfreda becomes a member of the committee. Discussing this composition of the committee the question was raised whether the editor of the journal should be a member of the committee or not. The general conclusion was that that should be the case in order to coordinate the different activities. The proposal for the new committee was also accepted by the General Assembly and by the proposed editor Peter Lynn.

Other issues

After having discussed the major issues for the start of the Association a brief discussion was held about next steps such as the constitution which will be proposed by the committee. Also the issue was discussed how far the Association should go with its discussion between substantive researchers and methodologists. The chairman suggested that we should be careful not to take over the tasks of the different disciplinary associations but concentrate on methodological issues in the substantive research more or less as it happened in the conference in Barcelona. However the communication could be improved by asking methodologists to discuss substantive papers and vice versa.
This being said, the meeting was closed with a very positive feeling about the first conference of the Association and about the future of the ESRA.