COMPARE - Toolbox for Improving the Comparability of Cross-National Survey Data with Applications to SHARE
The COMPARE project collects survey data aimed at creating internationally comparable measures of several dimensions of the quality of life - health, economic position, work disability, contacts with family and friends, health care quality, political efficacy, and satisfaction with life as a whole.
DECOIN – Development and Comparison of Sustainability Indicators
DECOIN has three main objectives: to find out the most promising ways to develop methodologies and data quality of best-needed sustainable development indicators; to evaluate existing methods and analytical frameworks in order to assess the progress towards sustainable development, to elaborate forecasts and scenarios, and to identify inter-relationships between unsustainable trends in the EU, and; to carry out a analysis on the inter-relationships between selected unsustainable trends. Existing indicator frameworks, large-scale one-dimensional frameworks and scenarios of unsustainable trends are evaluated from the perspective of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy. are also evaluated. A detailed analysis of the inter-relationships of the development processes related to the unsustainable trends, their synergies and trade-offs, is carried out by utilizing analytical frameworks such as Advanced Sustainability Analysis (ASA), Sustainability Multicriteria Multiscale Assessment (SUMMA) and Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MSIASEM). Based on the analyses an integrated tool will be constructed for assessment of interlinkages and for forecasting.
ESEC – European Socio-economic Classification
The project was designed to produce a European socio-economic Classification (ESEC) for use in comparative social science research across the EU. Comparative analysis of many aspects of the quality of life and of social cohesion, for example health, living conditions and economic situation of Europe’s population, seeking to understand variation between member states, is hampered by the lack of an agreed, harmonised and validated classification of socio-economic positions. This project was designed to improve the state of the art in this area and to make demonstrable progress towards comparative research in a wide variety of areas relevant to the knowledge based society. By providing an essential comparative European research tool, the ESEC project also hoped to greatly facilitate subsequent analyses of intergenerational social mobility and inheritance of inequalities.
ESS – European Social Survey
The European Social Survey (the ESS) is an academically-driven social survey designed to chart and explain the interaction between Europe's changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of its diverse populations. Now moving into its fourth round, the survey covers over 30 nations and employs the most rigorous methodologies. The fieldwork has been funded through the European Commission’s 5th and 6th Framework Programmes, the European Science Foundation and national funding bodies in each country.
EU‑KLEMS –Productivity in the European Union: A Comparative Industry Approach
The project created a database on measures of economic growth, productivity, employment creation, capital formation and technological change at the industry level for all European Union member states. This work provides an important input to policy evaluation, in particular for the assessment of the goals concerning competitiveness and economic growth potential as established by the Lisbon and Barcelona summit goals. The database facilitates the sustainable production of high quality statistics using the methodologies of national accounts and input-output analysis. The input measures include various categories of capital, labour, energy, material and service inputs. Productivity measures were developed, in particular with growth accounting techniques. The database is used for analytical and policy-related purposes, in particular by studying the relationship between skill formation, technological progress and innovation on the one hand, and productivity, on the other.
I-CUE – Improving the Capacity and Usability of EUROMOD
The main aims of this EUROMOD-related project were to start the process of expanding EUROMOD to cover the 10 New Member States (NMS) of 2004 and to make EUROMOD easier to use, especially when dealing with 25 systems and datasets. The project ends with a final conference in spring 2008. The aim of I-CUE was to re-design and up-grade EUROMOD in the light of enlargement and of lessons learned from operating and using the first, prototype version. The project provide the basis for increasing EUROMOD's capacity to address a wide range of social science questions, incorporating the 10 New Member States of 2004, improving ease of use and accessibility, improving the quality of results by enhancing comparability across countries and reducing the resources necessary to maintain, update and develop EUROMOD in the future.
INDI-LINK - Indicator-based Evaluation of Interlinkages between Sustainable Development Objectives
One core objective of INDI-LINK is to contribute significantly to the further development of the EU SDI set, evaluating the existing SDI set and developing new concepts and methods for the calculation of “best-needed” indicators. The project reviews emerging policy areas and provide recommendations for next steps in SDI development. The second core objective of INDI-LINK is the assessment of interlinkages between different priorities of the EU SDS. It provides a quantitative analysis of past interlinkages using selected indicators with best-suited assessment methods and tools, putting a particular focus on sensitivity analysis of the results. The project tests different methods and extends existing simulation models for extending indicator time series through forecasting and provide estimations on future developments of interlinkages. The final objective of INDI-LINK is the presentation of conclusions for future SD policy making and for an effective implementation of the revised EU SDS. INDI-LINK; the project aims to identify most effective combinations of environmental, economic and social policy measures.
KEI – Knowledge Economy Indicators: Development of Innovative and Reliable Indicator Systems
The project aimed to develop and improve indicators for the knowledge economy, including the analysis of aggregation issues and the use of composite indicators. KEI reviewed existing concepts and definitions of the knowledge-based economy and its key components; it developed main thematic areas in relation to the Lisbon and Barcelona objectives and used these themes to classify existing indicators and thoroughly explore data and indicator quality issues. Composite indicators were analysed in detail using both statistical and participatory approaches, including the use of multi-criteria methods, aggregation and weighting techniques, decomposition methods, and an evaluation of analytical and presentational techniques. Simulation methods were extensively employed to investigate the robustness of indicators and the conclusions based on them.
MICMAC – Bridging the Micro-Macro Gap in Population Forecasting
In an ageing population, the demand for adequate health care services, pension systems and other social protection systems is paramount. The sustainability of high-quality health care and pension systems is influenced to a considerable extent by demographic change and by the way people live their lives (lifestyle and life course). Therefore, an adequate monitoring and forecasting of demographic change and of the lifestyle and life course of the population are a conditio sine qua non for the provision of health and social security to the people of Europe. This requires a methodology that moves beyond conventional projections of the population by age and sex. What is needed is a methodology that complements the demographic projections with projections of the way people live their lives. The objective of MicMac was to develop this methodology.
MEADOW – Measuring the Dynamics of Organisations and Work
The coordination action MEADOW aims at setting out guidelines for collecting and interpreting harmonised European data on organisational change and work restructuring and their economic and social impacts, constituting a first step towards implementing a harmonised European survey instrument. The project integrates the perspectives of both producers and users by including research teams that have designed and implemented national survey instruments for measuring organisational change, innovation and work restructuring, as well as experienced users of such surveys. After a state of the art in surveys on organisational and work’s changes, and concepts of the organisational change, priorities in measurement and basic definitions are fixed; then the measure of organisational change in employee surveys, and in employers surveys, in different countries are analysed and different statistical methods identified; a harmonised questionnaire developing core indicators is finally tested and revised.
MOSUS – Modelling Opportunities and Limits for Restructuring Europe towards Sustainability
The MOSUS project integrated within a macroeconomic, multi-sectoral framework three major themes of European policies: Sustainable development; Competitiveness and social cohesion in the knowledge-based society, and; Globalisation and international trade. Based on an existing economic model, the project developed and applied an integrated ecological-economic simulation model in order to quantify the interrelations between socio-economic driving forces and the state of the environment. The analysis was done within a multi-country, multi-sectoral macroeconomic framework, including trade flows within Europe as well as between Europe and all other economically relevant parts of the world. The model directly integrated comprehensive bio-physical data (material and energy flows as well as land use data) in European and global simulations up to the year 2020 and put them in relation to structural indicators of social and economic developments. Thus, this tool allows for formulating and evaluating scenarios of the economic and social/distributional impacts of key environmental policy measures and for presenting validated policy recommendations for responding to environmental changes.
PRIME – Policies for Research and Innovation in the Move towards the European Research Area
PRIME was a network of excellence to develop long-term research and shared infrastructures on policies for research and innovation in the move towards the European Research Area (ERA); the overall objective of PRIME was to carry out the research and related structural actions needed to underpin policies for research and innovation in the move towards the European Research Area (ERA). The creation of the ERA involves the development of a fully-fledged new public ‘actor’. Thus, in addition to national and regional levels of government, there is a third level of public policy-making in research and innovation. Such a three-level system is probably unique in the world; it will be difficult to develop the new policy approaches required for the goals of the ERA to be achieved with the current fragmentation of research capabilities (both geographical and intellectual) on issues which underpin the emergence of ERA policy.
SHARE – Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe
SHARE is a multidisciplinary and cross-national database of micro data on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks of individuals aged 50 or over. Data collected include health variables (e.g. self-reported health, physical functioning, cognitive functioning, health behaviour, use of health care facilities), psychological variables (e.g. psychological health, well-being, life satisfaction), economic variables (current work activity, job characteristics, opportunities to work past retirement age, sources and composition of current income, wealth and consumption, housing, education), and social support variables (e.g. assistance within families, transfers of income and assets, social networks, volunteer activities). In addition, the SHARE data base includes variables and indicators created by the AMANDA RTD-Project under the European Union's 5th Framework Programme. The data is freely available to the entire research community.
THESIM – Towards Harmonised European Statistics on International Migration
The development, implementation and monitoring of a common European asylum and immigration policy requires a system of statistical information exchange on migration flows and asylum in the EU. However, these data are not always available and do not necessarily consider need for policy development. It is clear that more initiatives have to be developed in order to improve data collection and harmonisation of international migration statistics to provide reliable basic information and this is particularly important in the framework of European migration policy. The THESIM team organised 25 national meetings and through these meetings prepared 25 country reports on the national situation, as far as data collection on international migration, asylum, residence permits and citizenship. These meetings were organised with help of all statistical offices and the NCPs (National Contact Points) of the EMN (European Migration Network); all ministries and administrations involved in the field took part, those involved in legislation, in practical procedures or in data collection.
WORKS – Work Organisation and Restructuring in the Knowledge Society
WORKS was a pan-European research project which aimed at improving the understanding of the major changes in work in the knowledge-based society (KBS). Taking account of the global forces and of the regional diversity within Europe, the project investigated the evolving division of labour within and between organisations and the related changes at the workplace. The implications for the use of skills and knowledge, for flexibility and for the quality of work, as well as the impact on occupational identities, time use and learning of individuals were investigated in a comparative perspective. The role of the social dialogue and of the varieties of institutional shaping in Europe received particular attention.
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