SOCIAL SURVEYS

Describing, understanding and measuring social patterns of populations, communities or smaller groups is of major interest for academics, policy makers and ultimately the wider public, as inclusive and effective social policies can only be thought and implemented if the structure and functioning of the society are brought to light.

For this reason, several social surveys are consistently carried out across Europe; they measure the relation between income, living conditions and social inclusion, the participation in the labour market, consumption behaviours, population’s well-being, etc.

Sogeti provides statistical and methodological consulting services on social surveys, with special reference to the EU context. Besides having its in-house team of experts, Sogeti is part of an international network of recognised scientists and experts actively engaged in social surveys.

Since the early 2000’s, Sogeti cooperates with the European Commission successfully implementing public funded social surveys. In particular, as a contractor of the Statistical Office of the European Union, Sogeti has gathered firsth and experience in surveys design and implementation and is able to carry out social surveys across the EU. Sogeti’s in-house team of experts’ competences and skills include:

• Survey design and implementation;
• Data collection, management and validation;
• Data analysis and quality control;
• Computation of indicators;
• Data dissemination.

On behalf of the European Commission, Sogeti is currently drafting guidelines for the revision of EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Within this framework, our experts are conducting studies to improve the quality of the aforementioned survey while being engaged in the design and restructuring of the related publications. As a contractor for Eurostat, Sogeti was recently involved in the preparation of a scenario and recommendations for the smooth transition from the four-year to the six-year rotational model of the longitudinal component of the EU-SILC sample.

Between 2011 and 2013, as a contractor for Eurostat, Sogeti analysed and tested the use of statistical matching techniques to provide information on income and consumption from two different data sources: the EU-SILC and the Household Budget Survey (HBS). Within this framework, also model-based regional indicators were computed matching data from the EU-SILC,the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS).

From 2012 to 2014, Sogeti carried out an in-depth analysis of the 2011 LFS ad hoc module on employment of disabled people. This project, which was carried out for the Statistical Office of the European Union, involved the methodological evaluation of non-responses, partial responses and interview methods: it also included a revision of the wording of the questionnaire.

In the recent past, Sogeti contributed to the LFS metadata collection (questionnaires’ questions, variables, coding system, etc.), having conducted a study in response to Eurostat’s desire to enhance the comparability of LFS results and identify areas of possible improvement.