ANÁLISIS SOCIOLÓGICOS, ECONÓMICOS Y POLÍTICOS S.A.
“BETWEEN PUBLIC OPINION AND ASEP THERE ARE HARDLY ANY SECRETS”
ASEP is a private consulting firm, established in 1982, whose main purpose is social, economic and political research. Its founder and president, Prof. Dr. Juan Díez Nicolás, is a full-tenured Professor of Sociology since 1971 and was co-founder (1963-69) and last Director General (1976-77) of the former Instituto de la Opinión Pública, as well as the first Director General (1977-1979) of the present Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS).
ASEP has always maintained an academic and scientific orientation, politically neutral, non partisan, having gained a great prestige within the academic, political and entrepreneurial realms, as its large number of clients (some continuously since 1986), both in the private and the public sector, demonstrate. Its independence has deserved respect from the two major national political parties, even when analyses have not been favourable to them. Its independence and neutrality guarantee that there are no conditionings to its analyses, and still more important, nor even in the elaboration of the questions, as frequently happens in other surveys. ASEP has carried during 25 years a monthly survey on Pubic Opinion with a national representative sample of 1,200 persons through face-to-face personal interview at the respondent's home. ASEP's monthly reports, and especially the FLASHES, are usually on top of the desks of most main actors of Spanish life, both economic and political. A majority of the firms included in the IBEX have been subscribers of ASEP's Monthly Survey.
ASEP also conducts ad hoc surveys on a variety of topics. One of the most recent ones has been on the causes and consequences of LONLINESS. But, since more than a decade, and as part of the interest on Values Studies, a great interest has been given to the study of SECURITY in a very wide sense, from daily city security and national defence, to economic, environmental, energy, food, and health security, etc., both at the national and the international levels.
ASEP has also maintained an intensive international presence, having been ahead of other public and private research organizations in becoming the representative of Spain in some of the main comparative international social research projects. Thus, it has conducted all waves (1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010) of the World Values Survey, a project in which around one hundred countries participate, and is at present preparing the 2015-18 wave. ASEP’s President has been a member of the WVS-Executive Committee since 1993, and is at present Vice-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee since 2013. Also since 1993 he joined the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) which conducts an annual survey on a monographic topic in about forty countries. ASEP and JDSystems are the official Data Archive for the World Values Survey Association, and they also cooperate with GESIS for the archiving of the ISSP surveys. In 1994 ASEP was part of the group of institutions that founded the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), which now integrates around fifty participant countries, having applied the post-electoral module after each legislative election since that of 1996. ASEP has also conducted the 2004 European Elections Study, and belongs to other international organizations as NESSIE (Network of Economic and Social Science Infrastructures in Europe), and CSDI (Comparative Survey Design and Implementation). At present he participates, as Vice-chair, of a Consortium of 12 countries that has received an important research grant (FP-7) from the European Commission to conduct a research on Social and Political Transformation in the Arab World (more specifically on seven countries of the MENA region: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq). On February 1st took place the first international meeting in Cairo to present the first results of this research project.
THE WORLD VALUES SURVEY
The origin of the World Values Survey took place in 1981, when the European Values Study was first launched. In its second wave, in 1990, the two project separated into two independent organizations, though more than 65% of the questions have been common to both projects. Besides, the World Values Survey has been carried every five years since the 1990 wave (1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010), while EVS has preferred longer periods (every eight or nine years) so that since 1990 it has run surveys in 1999 and 2008. Therefore, while WVS has produced six waves, EVS has produced only four. Obviously, WVS has a greater number of countries, a greater number of interviews, and more diversity in the levels of economic development, political systems and values systems.
More concretely, WVS includes, taking all six waves into account, a total of 111 different countries, and around half a million interviews. The main characteristics of WVS are the following: 1) samples are national and probabilistic (generally multi-stage) of about 1,000-2,000 interviews per country; 2) interviews are always collected (with only some very special justified exception) through personal face-to-face interview at the respondent's home; 3) there is no central funding, so that in every country there is a team, generally a university, a research institution, a research firm, that assumes the responsibility to carry on the survey, always under the directives approved by the WVS Executive Committee, and of providing for the necessary funding of the survey; 4) the Data Archive, JDSurvey in Madrid, is responsible for the cleaning of country data files and the production of an aggregate data file for each wave, and for the presentation of such aggregate data file (in spss or stata format) in the WVS web page, so that it may be downloaded by interested persons fully free of any charge. Besides, the Data Archive permits the analysis of data in an interactive way and on line for those persons who do not know or do not want to use statistical analysis programs as those mentioned before (www.worldvaluessurvey.org); 5) At present, WVS is in the process of organizing and launching the seventh wave, that will be conducted between 2015-2018.
The contents of questionnaires includes all kind of questions on attitudes and behaviours relative to values systems: family, religion, work, politics, social ethics, social inequalities, gender, mass media, environment, economy, image of institutions, security and a long etc. Since 1981 to 2010 there have been many questions and batteries of questions that have been maintained in all waves, something that facilitates analysis of time series besides cross section analysis. In any case, the number of variables included in all six waves is greater than one thousand, since many questions have been included in only one or two waves.
In Spain, Professor Juan Díez-Nicolás, through his firm Análisis Sociológicos, Económicos y Políticos S.A., has been responsible for conducting the survey in 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010. He has also conducted the survey in Morocco for the last three waves (2000, 2005 and 2010), and has been a consultant for the team in Burkina Faso for the 2005 wave. He also promoted the 1995 wave in four Autonomous Communities in Spain (conducted in each case by a Professor of Sociology): Basque Country, Valencia, Galitzia and Andalousia.
Professor Díez-Nicolás organized (and funded) the first General Assembly of WVS participants (PI's) in El Paular (Madrid, Spain) in 1993, the closing session of which was chaired by Her Majesty the Qeen of Spain Sofía. The papers presented at the conference were published in a volume by Fundación de Telefónica (FUNDESCO) by Juan Díez-Nicolás and Ronald Inglehart (eds.) Tendencias Mundiales de Cambio en los Valores Sociales y Políticos (World Trends of Change in Social and Political Values), FUNDESCO, Madrid, 1994. Since then, Professor Díez-Nicolás has been a member of the Executive Committee of WVSA, Vice-President in 2004-2008, and Vice-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee at present.
The publications all over the world, based on WVS data, include thousands of books and professional articles.
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SURVEY PROGRAM (ISSP)
This research is based on an identical questionnaire that is applied in more than 35 countries covering most of the world by International Social Survey Program (ISSP). ASEP is a member of this group since 1993. ISSP is an organization established by research centers around the world that does not receive any funding nor provides funding to its members, and membership in it depends from admission by the assembly of all participating members. Each year a monographic research based on a questionnaire approved by the assembly of participating centers. Each center provides its data file to the Data Archive, and each participant receives the aggregate data file with the data of all participants in each survey. Among the surveys in which ASEP has participated as part of the ISSP program one should mention those relative to environment, social inequalities, social networks, national identity, attitudes towards work, etc. The last research carried by ASEP has been on Nationa Identity in 2013, the third time that this module has been conducted (previously in 1995 and 2003), for which reason analysis of data is being made right now, comparing data for Spain in three dates, and comparing data of Spain with around 40 countries also in the same three dates.
The survey for 2015 will focus, for the fourth time, on Work Orientations. The three previous surveys were also conducted by ASEP.
MONTHLY REPORT ON "SPANIARDS’ PUBLIC OPINION"
This is a monthly national survey that ASEP has been conducting since October 1986 (more than 240 studies completed till now). The survey on Spaniards’ Public Opinion is based on a sample of 1,200 persons representative of the total Spanish population 18 years and over, through face-to-face personal interview at R’s home, and it includes a fixed System of Indicators that allows producing long time series for more than 240 months at present, as well as opinions on current issues each month.
The structure of the monthly survey is as follows:
· Socio-economic structure of the Spanish population (household structure, occupation, education, income, household equipment, personal indicators, etc.)
· Economic attitudes and behaviour (evaluation of the personal economic situation, past, present and future, evaluation of the economic situation of Spain, consumer sentiment index, evaluation of the economic situation index, optimism index, savings index, etc.)
· Political attitudes and behaviour (ideology, voting intentions and estimates, image of institutions and leaders, religiosity, attitudes towards the European Union, satisfaction with democracy and with the government, etc.)
· Mass media consumption (readership, radio and television audiences, evaluation of main national newspapers, radio and television programs, etc.)
· Current issues: This block includes questions on the current events of each month since 1986, with a great variety of questions on all types of issues that are salient each month, and that constitute a valuable and unique history of opinion states in Spain over the last quarter of a century.
This repertoire of questions constitutes a very valuable instrument of analysis for researchers, journalists, experts on communication, students and just for people who are curious about the recent history of Spain. This is especially true for executives in first line firms and corporations who need to know and understand public opinion currents in Spanish society, as well as the cues for its recent evolution. Subscribers to this report receive on time a first advance report only five days after the end of fieldwork (which lasts a week), and they receive the full analysis report (about 250 pages) only eleven days after the end of each monthly fieldwork, and therefore just a few days before closing the questionnaire of the following month.
Subscription to the monthly report on Spaniards’ Public Opinion entitles to receive, without any additional charge, the report FLASHES, as well as to include every month five items in the questionnaire for exclusive use. Subscription also grants preference to include additional questions with lower tariffs than non-subscribers.
The table of contents each month is the following:
FLASHES
This publication is a summary of results of the monthly report, but it includes in addition an analysis of the Spanish social, economic and political context during the dates of the fieldwork, in order to provide a framework to better understand the answers of Spaniards to the monthly questionnaire, and to interpret the changes that may be observed in the more than 50 fixed indicators (which provide monthly time series for more than 24 years).
Subscribers to “Spaniards’ Public Opinion” receive FLASHES, but subscription to FLASHES may also be made independently.
TIME SERIES ANALYSIS
ASEP produces quarterly a time series analysis of the 22 more important and significant indicators. The analysis includes 6 graphics in which the time series are distributed, annually for all the years since 1986 till the current year, and quarterly for the current year. The report explains how to elaborate each indicator, as well as the changes in its elaboration when necessary.
The indicators included in those time series graphs are the following:
Religious practice
Self-anchoring scale of ideology
Spanish-nationalist identification
Post-materialism
Subjective social class
Identification with Spain or other territorial units
Consumer sentiment index
Evaluation of the economic situation of Spain
Evaluation of the personal economic situation
Propensity to saving
General satisfaction with life
Unemployment status
Use of computer
Acces to Internet
Acces to ADSL
Satisfaction with how democracy works in Spain
Satisfaction with the Government
Voting estimate
Satisfaction with Spain’s membership in the European Union
Exposure to information
Evaluation of political leaders
Evaluation of institutions
ASEP/JDS DATA BANK (www.jdsurvey.net)
This data archive offers the possibility of downloading data files from a great number of national and international projects and collections, just as other data archives. But, in addition, it offers the possibility of analyzing data files on line through the interactive program JDSurvey, which allows selecting the questions that one wants to analyze, produce the cross-tabulations of two or three variables simultaneously, graphs, and additionally provides a word search facility that leads immediately to all the questions in any of the collections where the word is included.
The research projects offered at present for Interactive use on line are the following:
Values studies
Latino barometer
Afro barometer
East Asia barometer
Global barometer
CSES (Comparative Study of Electoral Systems)
ISSP (International Social Survey Program)
CERC (Center of Studies of Contemporary Reality)
ASEP (Spaniards’ Public Opinion)
CIRES
Immigrants
Royal Institute Elcano
ASEP/JDS Data Bank is the Official Archive of the World Values Survey and it cooperates with GESIS (Germany) as official archive of the International Social Survey Program. It is the only social science research data archive bilingual in Spanish and English. A majority of the Spanish universities are among its subscribers, as well as a great number of public and private, national and foreign, entities.
The Data Bank includes, therefore, more than 1,600 different surveys, with more than 2 million interviews and more than 50,000 different variables.
OTHER SERVICES
In addition to the previously mentioned services, ASEP also conducts ad hoc surveys with representative samples of the Spanish population or with specific samples of concrete sectors of Spanish society, through data gathering systems that may be different to face-to-face interviews in households, as well as post-test advertising campaigns surveys, content analysis of mass media (written, radio or television media), research on special social groups through Internet, secondary analysis of statistical data, etc. In all these cases ASEP may present a large number of researches already done and in many cases published.
ASEP also produces ad hoc reports on secondary analysis of data from the large number of national and international surveys at its disposal, and prepares ad hoc presentations on specific issues and countries for executives of public and private organizations.
Finally, ASEP offers the possibility of sponsoring the web page of its Data Bank ASEP/JDS, International surveys in Spain or in other countries, due to its relationship with research organizations in more than one hundred countries, and to international expert meetings in specific issues or geographical areas.
Análisis Sociológicos Económicos y Políticos, S.A.
Nausica 18, Majadahonda, Madrid 28220
Tel: (34) 91 6380888 // (34) 609229846
Fax: (34) 91 6345327
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
