ESRA 2027 sessions by theme

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In many countries, the implementation of high-quality surveys is currently facing severe challenges. Innovative solutions are being sought and developed. Some of these solutions can benefit from strategic collaboration between survey stakeholder: these could be surveys among eachother, but also survey agencies and survey funders. Such collaboration often faces barriers.
Examples of areas in which collaboration might be beneficial include, but are not limited to, the following:

- Maintenance of face-to-face interviewing capacity. A single shared national network of interviewers could be more effective than multiple agencies attempting to maintain their own networks;
- Limited total national capacity for survey fieldwork. Survey commissioners and survey agencies could attempt to co-ordinate data collection schedules and sample structures for multiple surveys in order to avoid unmanageable peaks of demand for face-to-face data collection, and coordinate sampling plans.
- Absence of a national sampling frame that is well-suited to push-to-web methodology. Stakeholders could collaborate in pushing for, and helping to develop, a mechanism by which a sampling frame of individuals could be made routinely available for approved surveys.
- Methods to reach hard-to-reach groups in surveys that require particular expertise that is unavailable at individual institutes or agencies.

For this session, we seek presentations that exemplify collaborations that have sought to address shared challenges in the implementation of high-quality social surveys, such as the ones above. Examples of how barriers to collaboration have been tackled will be particularly welcomed, such as barriers introduced by the need for market competition between survey organisations, or barriers caused by the lack of funding or resources for such strategic activities. Presentations that set out plans for future strategic collaborations are also welcome.