International Institute for Health and Society
2006 SEMINAR SERIES
You are invited to attend
Tuesday 21st February 5.00 pm
Professor Roger Jowell
Director, Centre for Comparative Social
Surveys, City University, London
“Measuring national differences in attitudes:
Do cultural variations defy appropriate rigour?
The European Social Survey (ESS) is a 27-
nation comparative study of changing social
values. Started in 2001 and now in its third
round, it is carried out biennially with funding
from the European Commission, the European
Science Foundation and 27 national academic
funding agencies – in Britain’s case the ESRC.
Data from its first two rounds are already
publicly available.
As its founding director, Roger Jowell will trace
the origins and purpose of the time series and
outline the pleasures and pitfalls of large-scale
cross-national measurements of attitudes. He
will discuss the substantive difficulties of
achieving equivalent measures and the
organisational problems of negotiating a time
series of this scale and complexity – with 27
self-funded countries speaking around 25
different languages, each country steeped in its
own cultural imperatives and methodological
‘habits’.
Based on experience with the ESS and other
cross-national studies, Professor Jowell will ask
just how comparative such comparative
research can be, and how some of the
formidable obstacles can best be overcome.
Roger Jowellwas the founder-director of the
National Centre for Social Research (formerly
SCPR, Britain largest social research institute),
which he ran from 1969 until 2001. He joined
City University full time in October 2003 where
he set up the new Centre for Comparative
Social Surveys. More recently he co-founded
and directs the new European Social Survey
(ESS), a 22-nation comparative study of
changing social values within Europe. Roger
Jowell writes and lectures widely on substantive
and methodological issues in social research
The seminar series will be chaired by Professor
Sir Michael Marmot
This seminar will be held at UCL RSVP seminar
attendance by 17/02/06 (indicating any special
needs and for directions to the seminar room)
Email: [log in to unmask] Tel: 020 7679 8249
Drinks & snacks at 6pm after the seminar.
www.ucl.ac.uk/iish
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