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The project🔗

There is no shortage of existing web survey platforms. Generally, along with user-friendly questionnaire design tools, they allow users to manage lists of contacts to which surveys may be distributed through different communication channels.

However, for the fielding of cross-national high quality surveys, major shortcomings remain:

  • Layered access to contact data: First, access to panelist data should be confined to local national coordinators, and while it needs to be kept up to date, probably not all of it is appropriate to be shared with a third-party survey platform.
  • Fielding orchestration: Second, survey orchestration should be handled centrally, but without detailed access to individual panelist data.
  • Flexibility: Third, contact modes with panelists not only must include both email and short text messages (SMS), but they should be possible to freely intertwine during fieldwork: for example, sending an email invite and an SMS reminder.

SSHOC logo WPSS, The Web Panel Sample Service has been specified and developped within the framework of SSHOC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud H2020, as part of the Work Package Innovations in data production, led by ESS-ERIC. The software was developped by the CDSP's IT team at Sciences Po.

Opinion Survey for Country logo Use cases can be found in the Social Sciences and Humanities but may extend to broader contexts as well. Starting October 2021, a new release of the WPSS will support its first full-scale use case, within the frame of the European Social Survey for the web panel spinoff of ESS round 10, Opinion Survey for (Country) also known as the CRONOS-2 project.