Keynote Speakers

November 16, at 10.15

Marita Carballo (Social and Political Academy of Argentina, Argentina)

Marita Carbalo is “Academic Numerary” of the Social and Political Academy of Argentina and “Academic Numerary” of the National Education Academy and President of Voices (Research & Consultancy) Member of WIN/GIA. Elected Member of Scientific Executive Committee the World Values Survey (WVS), member of the Compared Sociology committee of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and Consultative member of CARI (Argentinean Committee for International Relations). 

Subjective Wellbeing and Public Policy

Abstract: There is a general idea that happiness is something to be attained individually – a personal choice, unrelated to public policies. This is the traditional view, but it’s changing and changing fast. Studies in the field of the economy, psychology and public opinion have shown that even though happiness is subjective it can be measured and related to personal features and trends in societies. Through the World values Surveys we can learn how subjective wellbeing has evolved in the last 30 years and analyze the factors that are correlated with happiness. In the past success has been measured mostly by economic growth - GDP - alone. But the data shows that there are other more important factors to be considered. Happiness differs from country to country and over time, due to reasons which are identifiable and that in many cases can be influenced by public policies, like health, education, family relationships, or freedom of expression.  This paper focuses in mapping the world happiness, identifying the factors that correlate to it and showing how public policy can help in generating the environment and the conditions to make citizens happier.

November 17, at 9.30

Christian Haerpfer (University of Vienna, Austria)

Christian Haerpfer is a President of WVSA, Professor of Political Science, University of Aberdeen. He was first Established Chair of Politics at the University of Aberdeen, MSc in Politics (University of Strathclyde), got PhD in Political Science (University of Vienna), PD in Political Science (Privat-Dozent University of Vienna) and was elected president during last WVSA Executive Meeting in substitution of Dr. Prof. Christian Welzel. 

Political Participation in Global Comparison. Patterns of conventional and unconventional political participation in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Asia, Africa and the Americas

Abstract: The paper will analyse global patterns of political participation in a cross-national and over-time comparison. The paper looks at stability or change of conventional participation like voting on the one hand and continuity and variability of unconventional participation like strikes on the other. Can we speak of a global rise or fall of political participation in form of a consistent global pattern or do we have to speak of different regional patterns in specific regions of the world?
The data-base of this comparative paper is the World Values Survey (WVS) as well as the Global Barometer Survey (GBS). The time period of analysis is ranging from 1990 until 2014. The paper is using WVS surveys from wave 2 (1990), wave 3 (1995), wave 4 (2000), wave 5 (2005) and wave 6 (2010-2012). It is using the first wave of the Global Barometer Survey in more than 90 countries of the world, which have been conducted in the 2000’s.
Another research question is, if social structure has an impact on political participation in its conventional and its unconventional forms. The paper is studying here, if age groups, generations, gender, social class, education or urban-rural cleavages are influencing the structure and extent of conventional respective unconventional political and in which direction.

November 17, at 10.15

Bi Puranen (Institute for Future studies, Sweden)

Bi Puranen is Associate Professor in the History of Economics at the University of Stockholm. She is also Secretary General of the World Values Survey Association (WVSA) and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Future Studies in Sweden. Her research focuses on health, human security, tolerance and changing values. Puranen co-edited Religion, democratic values and political conflict”Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (2009). 

The Relation between Muslim Localised Conflicts, Grievances and Transnational Violence 

Abstract: This paper will focus on the following questions: What is the relationship between localized conflicts, grievances and transnational violence in the Mena region? The rule of religious leaders within the concept of democracy in Muslim countries. The data used are mainly the World Values Survey, 6th wave which includes 13 MENA region countries (16.400 respondents) and 21 Muslim, non Arabic countries (n=9.289) and 39 other countries (n=55.474), which are used in a comparative perspective. Most of the theoretical and empirical literature concerning human security and conflicts compare conflicts across countries. In this paper, we are interested in one of the ingredients of human security ¬ the relationship between Muslim localised conflicts followed by lack of human security on a local level and transnational violence seen through the mindset of individual citizens, whether they are Arabic, Muslim in general or belonging to other congregations.The results of the interviews shows that the worries for a terrorist attack are substantially higher in the Muslim countries as compared with the rest of the world and it is especially high in the Mena region. Among the almost 28,000 respondents from a Muslim country, more than 70% worried about a terrorist attack. There are no dramatic differences between the sexes, neither are there any big differences between the age groups, or any substantial differences between the highly educated and the ones with lower education.

November 18, at 9.30

Darwish Al Emadi (Qatar University, Qatar )

Darwish Al Emadi has received his Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics at the University of Edinburgh in 1986. At Qatar University in Doha he has been Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (1995-2000) and Dean of the Graduate School (2001-2003). He was Director of the Education Institute at the Supreme Education Council (2003-2004) and he is currently Director of the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute at Qatar University. He was PI for Qatar in 1 wave and he organized two General Assemblies of WVSA in Doha in March 2013 and April 2014. Given his familiarity with the Arab region that is emerging in importance he was nominated as the Co-Chair of the SAC.

The Challenges of Surveying in Countries with Unorthodox Population Pyramid

Abstract: The national are expected to be the vast majority in any country. Hence,the survey design and fieldwork are structured accordingly. However, in GCC country, the population pyramid is totally different. In these states, the national are real minorities in their own country. To complicate the issue, The vast majority of population, who are expatriates come from many different countries. This situation present unique opportunity to carry out surveys in a setting unparalleled elsewhere. This presentation will focus on the survey in methodology in GCC countries .it highlights the main difficulties in this regard and some of the solutions adopted to deal with it.

November 18, at 10.15

Yasir Al Muqbel (Dubai Consultancy, Research and Media Center, UAE) 

Yasir Al Muqbel has been Director of the Quantitative Studies Division at Dubai Consultancy, Research and Media Center and Director of Public Opinion Studies since 2006. Al Muqbel has participated in developing the initiatives and feasibility studies of main projects in Dubai’s economy and from 1994-2006, Al Muqbel worked with the the Dept. of Economic Development, Government of Dubai, as an Economic Consultant.

Using Media Analysis to Rank Public Interest Issues-Quantitative Methodology

Abstract: The main goal of the quantitative methodology for media (QMM) is to monitor and analyze any public opinion content in local media to provide a credible source of research-based information to  support decision makers with the top issues engaging public opinion. The first step in the methodology is to monitor media content daily in local Arabic & English Newspapers, opinion-oriented radio & TV programs  ,along with popular social media outlets, including blogs, forums and twitter. Any newspaper article, broadcast topic, or online conversation that expresses any form of public concern/opinion is recorded as a media content item (MCI).  Each media item is summarized, given a unique ID, classified by a group. Groups are then clustered to formulate main issues/trends . A set of identifying properties such as  medium type, problem impact indicator (PI)* and sentiment code** and public engagement measure are assigned to each MCI. Once collection period is completed, an automated ranking process runs reports to sum the problem impact values by content group and ranks the top issues for that duration.

*Problem Impact: The problem impact is a composite indicator includes the population affected, medium audience, MCI presentation and public response.

**Sentiment Code: Each MCI has a tone value where +1=positive, 0=neutral, and -1=negative representing the tone of the opinion writer or speaker.   Since the Media item Tone is represented as a number the aggregate of the tone is used to reach the tone of the groups as well as the issues. 

November 19, at 9.30

Alejandro Moreno (ITAM, Mexico )

Alejandro Moreno is a Professor of Political Science at ITAM (since 1996), and Head of the Department of Public Opinion Research at Reforma newspaper (since 1999). He is a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNI), and serves as Principal Investigator in Mexico for the World Values Survey and the Comparative National Elections Project, CNEP. He has also served as Managing Director of the Latinobarómetro poll since 2010, and he is currently the eх-President and President Elect of the World Association for Public Opinion Research, WAPOR. 

Understanding Citizen Satisfaction with Democracy: Empirical Evidence from 18 Latin American Countries

Abstract: During the last 20 years, most Latin Americans have expressed dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy. What do citizens consider when they make up their evaluations of the political system? In other words, what explains citizen satisfaction with democracy in those newly democratic contexts? In this paper I empirically test several alternative explanations of why the Latin American publics express satisfaction or dissatisfaction with democracy, most of them developed in a broad literature on satisfaction with democratic government. Those explanations include democratic principles (support for democracy), perceptions (how democratic they believe the country is), economic performance (results), a sense of social justice (distribution of wealth), institutional performance (trust in institutions), partisan orientations (who governs—the winner, loser hypothesis in the literature of satisfaction with democracy), perceptions of elections (integrity of procedures), perceptions of corruption and crime (results), and generalized social trust. My aim is to revise the literature on satisfaction with democracy using the 20 year and 18 country Latinbarometer database. (This presentation is based on a work in progress, hoping to not only discuss the conceptual framework and analysis in the LCSR conference but also benefit from it for its eventual publication). 

November 19, at 10.15

Juan Díez-Nicolás (ISSP, Spain)

Juan Diez-Nicolas is a Director of the Chair for Research in Social Sciences and Security at the European University of Madrid. Over 35 years he has chaired the Universities of Malaga, Autonomous of Madrid, UNED, and the Complutense of Madrid. At present he is Deputy chair for the Arab Trans-Social and Political Transformations in the Arab World (FP-7 program of the European Union). He was also a member of the 2003 High-Level Advisory Group on Intercultural Dialogue, chaired by Romano Prodi. 

The Perception of Security in an International Comparative Perspective

Abstract: Security has become a major issue in present societies. Though this concept has a very wide meaning, implying food, health, energy, environment, job, economic security and other aspects of security, internal security (citizens personal security) and external security (national defense) continue to be of major importance in most countries of the world. The main hypothesis is that greater concern for security is a result of growing personal and economic insecurity in most countries, which, in its turn may derive from the growth of financial capitalism, the only globalized world power at present. Data from previous research has shown that citizens perceive at least three major spheres of security: personal (including family), community and national. The three spheres are certainly related but have different importance for different social groups and vary across nations. The theoretical model includes a differentiation between subjective (perceived) security and objective security. This paper focuses on the subjective dimension and examines results from the 6th wave of the World Values Survey (2010-2014), which includes 59 countries and a total of more than 85,000 personal interviews. Three indexes of Subjective Security (personal, community and national) have been computed, following the methodology already used in previous surveys in Spain, plus a fourth index computed by aggregation of the other three. Besides, four regression models have been computed to explain the four indexes, based on socio-economic variables, attitudinal variables, defense and national variables, and a final model which includes the most powerful explanatory variables in the previous three models.

November 20, at 9.30

Christian Welzel (LCSR, HSE Moscow, & Leuphana University, Germany)    

Christian Welzel is a leading professor of LCSR. He is also a Vice President of the World Values Survey Association, and the Professor of Political Culture Research, Institute of Political Science and Center for the Study of Democracy at the Leuphana University in Germany, as well as Adjunct Professor at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany.

Misconceptions of Measurement Equivalence: Internal Coherence versus External Validity

Abstract: Advocates of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGFCA), structural equation modelers and adherents of latent variables have grown increasingly influential in cross-national survey research. Indeed, these scholars have established a notion of “measurement equivalence” on which a growing number of researchers seem to agree. This notion posits that country-level scores of a multi-item construct are comparable if—and only if—the pattern of inter-item coherence at the individual level is the same within each country. We argue that this notion is fundamentally flawed in various ways. First, a proper understanding of the “micro-macro puzzle in the social sciences” leads to the inevitable conclusion that the measurement properties of a construct at the individual level within countries are entirely uninformative about this concept’s validity at the country level. Hence, constructs designed to capture country-level phenomena cannot be judged by their individual-level properties. Doing so nevertheless, is to step into the trap of the “individualistic fallacy.”
Second, there are two legitimate but opposite logics of construct formation—combinatory and dimensional. Thus, when a concept is designed due to the combinatory logic, its qualities cannot be assessed against the standards of the dimensional logic. In this context, it needs to be emphasized that the expanding usage of MGCFA has injected into cross-national survey research an obsession with “measurement equivalence.” This is an unfortunate development because it creates a pre-occupation with measurement models that distract science from its main purpose: explanation. To correct this development, a shift in the assessment of measurement quality from internal consistency to external validity (predictive power) is necessary. This shift requires a wider usage of combinatory constructs, which would be helpful for theory development because such constructs require some thinking about meaningful combinations and their possible consequences.
Third, the preoccupation with measurement in-equivalence comes with a flawed understanding of it. Specifically, cross-national differences in a construct’s individual-level consistency do not per se make country-level scores in this construct incomparable. This would only be the case if such consistency differences eliminate the respective construct’s association with its theoretically expected correlates. As we will demonstrate, value constructs from the WVS, most notably emancipative values, are unaffected by this problem.
Fourth, cross-national consistency differences in emancipative values are themselves an aspect of the modernization process: these differences are induced by cognitive mobilization. This further qualifies emancipative values as a valid measure of modernization’s manifestation in collective mentalities. 

November 20, at 10.15

Peter Schimidt (University of Giessen, Germany)

Peter Schmidt  – is a famous German sociologist, professor at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen He is also the supervisor of International Scientific-Educational Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research at HSE. Prof. Schmidt is author and co-author of more than 20 books and several dozens of articles in international scientific journals. He is also a reviewer in European Sociological review, Political Psychology, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and several other journals. His research interests focuses on survey methodology, cross-cultural psychology and value studies, ethnic and group relations, subjective well-being and many other topics.

Testing for exact and approximate measurement invariance: The case of the human values scale and attitudes toward Immigration in the European Social Survey.

Abstract: One of the most frequently used procedures for measurement invariance testing is the multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA). Metric Invariance(equal factor loadings)  is regarded as a prerequisite for comparing covariances and regression coefficients over countries and/or time points. Scalar invariance(equal intercepts of items) is seen as a prerequisite for comparing observed and latent means. However in most cases even partial scalar invariance is not given in the large international data-generating programs like ESS, EVS, ISSP and WVS. Therefore Muthén and Asparouhov recently proposed two new approaches to handle measurement invariance. One new approach is to test for approximate rather than exact measurement invariance using Bayesian MGCFA. Approximate measurement invariance permits small differences between parameters otherwise constrained to be equal in the classical exact approach. The other one is the alignment procedure using a special type of Maximum-Likelihood Estimation. 
Several studies that tested for the measurement invariance properties of basic human values in the European Social Survey (ESS) failed to establish high levels of invariance across a large set of countries. The current study applies the approximate measurement invariance procedure on the ESS data to test for its invariance properties across countries in each of its six rounds from 2002 until 2012. The same is true for the attitude toward immigration scale in the ESS, for which we report both the results of the classical procedure, the alignment procedure and approximate measurement invariance.