International Institute for Health and Society

2006 SEMINAR SERIES

You are invited to attend

Tuesday 21^st 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 Jowell was 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

Jane Johnson

Administrative Assistant

Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UCL

1-19 Torrington Place

London, WC1E 6BT

T: +44(0)20 7679 8249