Social research services

Tender description

The ESS ERIC wishes to commission a scoping report on potential methodologies for measuring media context on the European Social Survey. The report should review past approaches to this problem within the European Social Survey, evaluate alternatives where they already exist, and explore the merits and costs of developing a new methodology that reduces the burden on national coordinators and, if possible, eliminates the need for real-time selection and coding of media material during fieldwork periods. It should make recommendations for how the ESS ERIC should tackle the measurement of the fieldwork context henceforth, and produce a draft work package to implement these recommendations as part of the next ESS ERIC work programme in 2019-21. The scoping study should be conducted between the 1.1.2018 and be ready by the 30.6.2018. The ESS ERIC wishes to commission a scoping report on potential methodologies for measuring media context on the European Social Survey. The report should review past approaches to this problem within the European Social Survey, evaluate alternatives where they already exist, and explore the merits and costs of developing a new methodology that reduces the burden on national coordinators and, if possible, eliminates the need for real-time selection and coding of media material during fieldwork periods. It should make recommendations for how the ESS ERIC should tackle the measurement of the fieldwork context henceforth, and produce a draft work package to implement these recommendations as part of the next ESS ERIC work programme in 2019-21. Possible options which the report should address include (but are not limited to): — Continuing the collection of media claims with enhanced central support and clear guidelines, — Making effective use of the political claims data collected in rounds 6-8, — Suggesting ways to improve the present media claims collection procedure, — Suggesting alternatives to the present media claims procedure — Experimenting with automated coding of claims/events, — Using ‘expert reports’ on major developments within countries to supplement claims data, — Exploring how far other sources, including Twitter and other social media data, can augment or replace the current contextual database. The scoping study should be conducted between the 1.1.2018 and be ready by the 30.6.2018.