The differentiation of survey procedures in cross-country comparative studies on the basis of 1537 surveys conducted in European countries in the period from 1981 to 2017

Abstract

_{This article presents differences in sampling procedures and fieldwork execution of national surveys within five major comparative cross-country projects, i.e., Eurobarometer/Candidate Countries Eurobarometer, the European Quality of Life Survey, the European Social Survey, the European Values Study and the International Social Survey Programme. The main part of the analysis is based on a dataset describing the methodology of 1537 surveys that were carried out in the period from 1981 to 2017 on representative samples of the populations of European countries. The author starts with a short overview of a cross-country project and then presents the scope of methodological archivisation of sampling and fieldwork procedures. Cross-projects and longitudinal differences in the quality of survey documentation are also explained. The main analysis describes the cross- and within-project differences in survey procedures with respect to 1) target populations, 2) sampling frames, 3) types of survey samples and sampling designs, 4) within-household selection of target persons in address-based samples, 5) fieldwork execution (e.g., length of fieldwork, modes of data collection, presence or absence of substitutions, use of advance letters and respondents’ incentives, presence of refusal conversions or back-checking procedures), and 6) fieldwork outcome rates.}