ESF supported research team, the European Social Survey (ESS), wins Europe’s premier science award
ESF news release - issued 06/12/2005 -
07/12/2005
The EU’s Descartes prize for scientific excellence in research is awarded to the social sciences for the first time.
Europe’s top annual science award, the €1,000,000 Descartes Research Prize, was shared this year by five pan-European teams who achieved major scientific breakthrough in key European research areas. The European Social Survey has, through its innovative research methods, become the first Descartes award recipient within the field of social sciences. This further underlines the pioneering aspects of the ESS project and its scientific achievements.
The European Social Survey (ESS) is a unique survey that aims to explain changes in Europe’s social, political and moral climate. Its research methods exhibit unprecedented ways to interpret in depth facts about changes in social structures within European societies. It is funded jointly by the European Commission; the European Science Foundation (ESF) and national funding bodies in each country.
The main challenge for the ESS has been to tackle head-on the notorious difficulties of producing reliable data in a cross-national, cross-cultural context. This challenge has been met with an innovative approach: The first round of the project was launched in 2002 and a core ESS questionnaire was designed to cover numerous topics and to produce a unique record over time of underlying attitude shifts throughout Europe. The data produced aims to fulfill one major key objective of the research project, which is to aid governance at a national- and a European level.
The success of the ESS, further emphasised by the Descartes Research Prize, unmistakably underlines the vital role that international cooperation in funding and research must play in the future. The benefits of a clearly defined research structure, which transcends national boundaries, are evident in the research results presented by the ESS.
The ESS project and its obvious focus on the benefits of European cooperation in research, demonstrates one way that the European Science Foundation (ESF) and its partners can contribute to the European research community in a global context.
