European Social Survey
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Well-being is more than happiness and life satisfaction: a multidimensional analysis of 21 countries Open
Background Recent trends on measurement of well-being have elevated the scientific standards and rigor associated with approaches for national and international comparisons of well-being. One major theme in this has been the shift toward m…
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Why You Should <i>Always</i> Include a Random Slope for the Lower-Level Variable Involved in a Cross-Level Interaction Open
Mixed-effects multilevel models are often used to investigate cross-level interactions, a specific type of context effect that may be understood as an upper-level variable moderating the association between a lower-level predictor and the …
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Health, Well-Being and Energy Poverty in Europe: A Comparative Study of 32 European Countries Open
Despite growing pan-European interest in and awareness of the wide-ranging health and well-being impacts of energy poverty—which is characterised by an inability to secure adequate levels of energy services in the home—the knowledge base i…
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Parenthood and Happiness: Effects of Work-Family Reconciliation Policies in 22 OECD Countries Open
The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national variation in the association between parenthood and happiness reveal accumulating evidence of lower levels of happiness among parents than nonparents in most advanced industriali…
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Regulation and Trust: 3-Month Follow-up Study on COVID-19 Mortality in 25 European Countries Open
Background The outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has dramatically changed societies in 2020. Since the end of February, Europe has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19, but there are major country differences in both the spr…
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The populist citizen: Empirical evidence from Europe and Latin America Open
Scholars are increasingly interested in ‘populist attitudes’, which – studies show – can explain party support and vote choice. However, current research has not yet analyzed in detail the characteristics of those individuals with populist…
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Perceived age discrimination across age in Europe: From an ageing society to a society for all ages. Open
Ageism is recognized as a significant obstacle to older people's well-being, but age discrimination against younger people has attracted less attention. We investigate levels of perceived age discrimination across early to late adulthood, …
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Increasingly unequal? The economic crisis, social inequalities and trust in the European Parliament in 20 European countries Open
The 2008/2009 economic crisis has been identified as an important element contributing to declining trust in institutions in Europe and worldwide. However, it is unclear whether this decline in trust is distributed homogenously among citiz…
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Government Openness and Public Trust: The Mediating Role of Democratic Capacity Open
The open government paradigm implies that public processes are becoming more transparent, public information is available online, and citizens and nongovernmental organizations are encouraged to interact with public administration through …
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Immigration, public opinion and the recession in Europe Open
It is widely believed that the recent recession has soured public attitudes towards immigration. But most existing studies are cross-sectional and can shed little light on the economy-wide forces that shift public opinion on immigration. I…
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Linking Migration Intentions with Flows: Evidence and Potential Use Open
In the absence of reliable, internationally available migration flow data necessary for statistical forecasting, policymakers increasingly turn to survey data on emigration intentions to evaluate future migration trends. The important assu…
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Social and Institutional Trust in Times of Crisis: Greece, 2002–2011 Open
Focusing on 2002–2011, we analyse levels of trust in Greece and compare them with 17 other European countries. During this period, Greece endured a serious economic crisis. Signs of increasing mistrust in all societal institutions became e…
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Changes in Young Europeans’ Values During the Global Financial Crisis Open
We investigate the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on the personal values of youth and young adults (age 16–35 years) from 16 European countries. Using time series cross-sectional data from seven waves (2002–2014) of the Europe…
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The urban-rural polarisation of political disenchantment: an investigation of social and political attitudes in 30 European countries Open
Relatively little research has explored whether there is a systemic urban-rural divide in the political and socioeconomic attitudes of citizens across Europe. Drawing on individual-level data from the European Social Survey, we argue that …
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The dynamic relations between economic conditions and anti-immigrant sentiment: A natural experiment in times of the European economic crisis Open
Theories on intergroup relations suggest that negative attitudes toward immigrants tend to rise when economic conditions deteriorate. However, these arguments were mostly tested during times of economic prosperity in Europe. We put this th…
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Why Income Inequality Is Dissatisfying—Perceptions of Social Status and the Inequality-Satisfaction Link in Europe Open
Includes supplementary materials for the online appendix.
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Deservingness perceptions, welfare state support and vote choice in Western Europe Open
In today’s diversified party systems, the economic dimension is no longer a unidimensional conflict between pro-redistribution voters of the left and anti-redistribution voters of the right. Analyzing 2016 European Social Survey data for 1…
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Public opinion on basic income: Mapping European support for a radical alternative for welfare provision Open
The idea of a universal basic income (BI) is both radical and simple. Obtaining a sufficient citizenship-based income without work obligations is fundamentally opposing the foundations of the welfare systems that are in place nowadays. As …
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Immigration, political trust, and Brexit – Testing an aversion amplification hypothesis Open
A few weeks prior to the EU referendum (23rd June 2016) two broadly representative samples of the electorate were drawn in Kent (the south‐east of England, N = 1,001) and Scotland ( N = 1,088) for online surveys that measured their trust i…
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Constructing a housing precariousness measure for Europe Open
There are concerns that the recovery from the Great Recession in Europe has left growing numbers of people facing precarious housing situations. Yet, to our knowledge, there is no comparative measure of housing precariousness in contrast t…
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Great expectations: the effect of democratic ideals on political trust in European democracies Open
While in the older literature, low levels of political trust were routinely interpreted as a lack of support for democracy, more recently authors have claimed that the value pattern of critical citizens is a hallmark for a mature and stabl…
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Does Economic Insecurity Predict Religiosity? Evidence from the European Social Survey 2002–2014 Open
Economic development and increases in material security have been suggested as primary causes of secularisation in the West. However, the relationship between economic insecurity and religion is both under-theorised and under-explored. The…
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Eco-Social Divides in Europe: Public Attitudes towards Welfare and Climate Change Policies Open
In the face of accelerating global warming and attendant natural disasters, it is clear that governments all over the world eventually have to take measures to mitigate the most adverse consequences of climate change. However, the costs of…
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Bridging the enduring gender gap in political interest in Europe: The relevance of promoting gender equality Open
Notwithstanding the improvement in gender equality in political power and resources in European democracies, this study shows that, on average, declared interest in politics is 16 per cent lower for women than for men in Europe. This gap r…
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Authoritarian values and the welfare state: the social policy preferences of radical right voters Open
What kind of welfare state do voters of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) want and how do their preferences differ from voters of mainstream left- and right-wing parties? In this paper, we draw on an original, representative survey of…
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Needs and Well-Being Across Europe: Basic Psychological Needs Are Closely Connected With Well-Being, Meaning, and Symptoms of Depression in 27 European Countries Open
In the quest to identify the key sources of subjective well-being, self-determination theory (SDT) has proposed that three basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—are fundamental to well-being across cultures. To un…
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Practising what you preach: how cosmopolitanism promotes willingness to redistribute across the European Union Open
The political fault lines surrounding the European sovereign debt crisis have underlined the high political relevance and the fragile foundation of public support for international redistribution in the European Union. Against the backdrop…
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Populism, participation, and political equality Open
This article analyses the relationship between populist attitudes and political participation. We argue that populist attitudes can be a motivation for participation through their identity, emotional, and moral components, and that they ha…
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Reactionary Politics: Explaining the Psychological Roots of Anti Preferences in European Integration and Immigration Debates Open
The concurrent strong waves of anti‐EU integration and anti‐immigration preferences sweeping across Europe, capitalized on by populist discourses, reflect citizens’ economic anxieties brought about by the financial crisis, dormant cultural…
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‘Immigrationization’ of welfare politics? Anti-immigration and welfare attitudes in context Open
Several studies have shown that a person's attitude towards immigration affects his or her support for welfare redistribution. According to one view, negative attitudes towards immigration undermine support for welfare redistribution, as t…