CROss-National Online Survey Panel data now available

Survey data collected online through the Synergies for Europe's Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences (SERISS) project is now available to download.

The CROss-National Online Survey Panel (CRONOS) is the world’s first input-harmonised cross-national probability-based web panel to be undertaken. It has been piloted in three countries - Estonia, Great Britain and Slovenia - by following up with respondents who took part in Round 8 (2016) of the European Social Survey (ESS).

The CRONOS project capitalised on existing probability-based face-to-face surveys to establish a probability-based sample for the web panel.

After completing the ESS Round 8 face-to-face interview, respondents in Estonia, Great Britain and Slovenia aged over 18 were invited to participate in six 20 minutes online surveys over a period of 12 months. 

They were offered a £5/€5 incentive with each survey invitation - respondents who did not have internet access were provided with a tablet and internet access for the duration of the project. 

Respondents were recruited by high quality survey agencies in each participating country: Statistics of Estonia in Estonia, NatCen Social Research in Great Britain and the Public Opinion and Mass Communications Research Centre at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. 

CRONOS fieldwork began in February 2017 and continued for 12 months. In total, seven surveys were completed including a welcome survey. 

The questions included in the CRONOS web panel were a mixture of items previously fielded in face-to-face surveys conducted by the ESS and other SERISS project members: the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), the European Values Study (EVS) and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE ERIC). 

The data collected online form part of a larger dataset containing data from the ESS face-to-face interview, allowing for new analyses that were not previously possible. 

Data from which respondents are not directly identifiable is now publicly and freely available for non-commercial use thanks to the efforts of the three national teams and the ESS data archive in Norway: Sikt - Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (formally NSD). 

The CRONOS panel was used for pre-testing of items that were developed as part of the questionnaire design process for ESS Round 9 (2018) rotating modules and new items for the EVS 2017 and GGP 2020 surveys. 

CRONOS Wave 3 also contains country-specific benchmark items such as census questions and questions from large scale surveys like the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). 

The CRONOS panel has served as a platform for experimental testing. Apart from contact mode and incentives experiments aimed at improving participation rates, motivational message experiments aimed at improving response quality, as well as various question wording and MTMM experiments, were implemented in several CRONOS waves.