Data

EURYKA - Reinventing Democracy in Europe

Project Description

The proposed project aims to study the relations between inequalities and young people's ways of doing politics as well as to advance scenarios for future democratic models and political systems in Europe that are more inclusive for young people. It has three main objectives: (1) To provide systematic evidence on the ways in which inequalities are lived by young people and (re)acted upon, exploring the coping mechanisms which are embedded in young people's ways of doing politics; these coping mechanisms are manifested in multiple forms, i.e. as either political (dis)engagement and contestation online and offline or as (trans-)national democratic innovation and experimentation; (2) To advance knowledge on the conditions and causes underpinning young people's ways of doing politics; this involves an examination of their norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors regarding democracy, power, politics, policymaking, social and political participation (online and offline) and the organization of economic, social and private life in order to identify ways to strengthen youth political participation and engagement with democratic life in Europe; (3) To suggest a number of different future scenarios for the development of democracy and political participation in Europe, putting particular emphasis on implementing new democratic models that are more inclusive for young people especially those with fewer opportunities. The research design consists of a multidimensional theoretical framework that combines macro-level (institutional), meso-level (organizational), and micro-level (individual) explanatory factors, a cross-national comparative design that includes nine European countries with different institutional arrangements and policies towards youth, and an integrated methodological approach based on multiple sources and methods (policy analysis, claims-making analysis, organizational survey, panel survey, survey experiments, biographical interviews, and social media analysis).

To know more: Final report

Project website: https://www.unige.ch/sciences-societe/euryka/home/

 

Consortium Information

Project Coordinator: Université de Genève, Marco Giugni

Partners:

University of Sheffield, Maria Grasso

 Scuola Normale Superiore, Lorenzo Bosi

Uppsala universitet, Katrin Uba

Universität Siegen, Christian Lahusen

Sciences Po, Manlio Cinalli

Panepistimio Kritis. Maria Kousis

Uniwersytet Warszawski, Marcin Sinczuch

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Anna Clua

European Alternatives, Niccolò Milanese

 

Datasets

Dataset 1:  Policy Analysis

The dataset includes indicators of youth-related policies. In particular, it examines those policies related to young people’s political, societal, and cultural activism across the nine countries of the EURYKA project. The focus has been contemporary policies, but some recent changes were also accounted for, especially those in relation to the recent economic crisis. The policies of nine countries were examined through two main analytical angles: (1) Opportunity for participation: To what extent the existing policies encourage or discourage political, social, and cultural activism of young people in comparison to other age groups; (2) Social inclusion: To what extent the existing policies provide negative or positive special treatment to vulnerable groups and thereby exaggerate or reduce the inequalities of these groups. It is important to note that while (1) refers particularly to difference between the young people and other age groups, (2) looks at the inclusion of all vulnerable groups because it is assumed that the policies which affect these groups in general also affect young people belonging to these groups.

Each national team followed the same analytical framework for evaluating policies relevant for the listed six policy areas. This involved the description of the policies and provision of a score (from -1 to +1), which describes the extent the particular policies address the opportunities for participation of young people in comparison to other age groups and the inclusion of vulnerable groups.  

Spatial Coverage: France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom

Time Method:  Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Standardized scores based on content analysis of policy documents

Universe:  Not applicable

Mode of Data Collection: Compilation / Synthesis

Sampling Description: Not applicable

Data Collection Instruments: Guidelines

Further Documentation: Integrated report

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here.

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Policy Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2021

 

Dataset 2:  Political Claims Analysis

Cross-national dataset containing 4,525 youth-related political claims coded for the period 2010-2016, for the nine countries of the EURYKA project, following political claims analysis of five daily newspapers (and when necessary, tabloids) in each country, using the same Codebook and guidelines. The aggregate dataset contains national random samples of about 500 claims in each country and allows focusing not only on atypical events (usually most visible in the media), but also including the everyday debate about youth and youth-related issues. At the same time, the period of study, 2010-16, allows for the assessment of diachronic change in terms of public reaction to these issues.

The aim was to study how young people and young people's way of doing politics are dealt with in the media, as well as to analyze the presence of organized youth and contestation in the public domain and the claims for new democratic models and social and political change they raise in each country. Therefore, the dataset includes eight sets of variables for each youth-related claim, each corresponding to a specific element of a claim (actor, form, issue, etc.). The 8 sets of variables in the dataset are: location of the claim in time and space (When and where has the claim occurred?); actor(s) making the claim (Who has made the claim?); form of the claim (How was the claim made?); additional variables for protest events; addressee of the claim (At whom is the claim directed?); issue(s) of the claim (What is the claim about?); object(s) of the claim (Who is affected by the claim?); and, framing of the claim (How is the claim defined and interpreted?)

Spatial Coverage: France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK

Time Method:  Time series

Analysis Unit:  Instances of claims-making

Universe: Youth related-claims

Mode of Data Collection: Content coding

Sampling Description: Random sampling of 500 claims selected from five newspapers in each country and covering the period from 2010 to 2016. 100 claims per newspaper; not for each year. The articles are sampled from all newspaper sections, including local/regional sections, excluding the editorials and sports sections, through keywords search.

Data Collection Instruments: Codebook

Further Documentation: Integrated report

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here.

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2021

 

Dataset 3:  Organizational Analysis

The dataset contains information on 4500 websites of youth organizations from the nine countries of the EURYKA project. It includes variables identifying and describing the youth organization, the organizational profile, activities and constituency groups, aims and values, and links from the website to social media platforms and partner websites.

The aim was to investigate the opportunity structures for young people and how they differ between countries. Hence, key variables included measure how young people are participating (as leaders, active participants, or passive beneficiaries), what democratic structures organizations have established, and which aims they pursue. Moreover, the dataset includes a large variety of organizations, including sports clubs and scouts, religious groups, service-oriented charities, youth wings of political parties, youth parliaments, and (informal) political action groups.

Spatial Coverage: France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK

Time Method:  Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Youth-related or youth-led organization, i.e. a collective body/unit which organizes youth and voices claims in one or various issue fields and forms of activity – as depicted through the organization’s website.

Universe:  Youth-related and youth-led organization websites in the nine countries of the EURYKA project.

Mode of Data Collection: Content coding

Sampling Description: The sampling process aimed at randomly selecting 500 websites of youth organizations per country. The mapping of youth organizations was organized into two stages: information -gathering on the country-specific organizational field and systematic data retrieval of the active organizations. In sum, two populations resulted: one of website URLs derived from hubs and one of Facebook pages. To build one uniform dataset available for statistical analysis, organizations identified via Facebook were later on only coded if they provided a link to a website outside Facebook.

In the next step, coders randomized both lists (Facebook pages and websites) and drew a sample from both lists, initially 100 from each. After reviewing the first results, it was decided that for each country there will different sample sizes from both sources, in an attempt to be inclusive of the diversity of organizations in each country and representative for each country.

Data Collection Instruments: Codebook, questionnaire

Further Documentation: Integrated report

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here.

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Organizational Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2021

 

Dataset 4: Panel Survey Data

The data is based on quotas for age, gender, region and education in each of the nine countries included in the project. Furthermore, booster samples were added for young people in order to have large enough samples to analyze the differences between different sub-categories of young people by gender, class, age, educational level including levels of digital literacy, etc.

Spatial Coverage: UK, Italy, Sweden, Germany, France, Greece, Poland, Spain, Switzerland

Time Method: Panel data

Analysis Unit: Individuals

Universe:  National population of eight countries

Mode of Data Collection: Online questionnaire

Sampling Description: The survey samples employed quotas for age, gender, region and education . In addition, you people aged 18–24 and 25–34 years old were oversampled, using quotas for age, gender, region, and education. Each country’s age-group oversample consists of at least 1000 individuals. The full sample size in each country ranges between 3018 and 3080 individuals.

Data Collection Instruments: Questionnaire

Further Documentation: Integrated report

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Policy Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Datasets Survey Experiment

5.1:Survey Experiment -Elite discourses and youth political engagement

The dataset contains experimental data on the impact of the discourses of political elites on the political engagement of young people. The experiment tested the effect of different kinds of elite discourses as well as the impact of the author of the discourse’s attributes on the level of trust young people have in respect to various political actors and institutions, on their perception of internal and external political efficacy, and on their intention to engage in different forms of participation. The experiment is built on a 2 (discourse: pro-youth, anti-youth) x 2 (ideology: left, right) x 2 (role: government, opposition) between-subjects factorial design, which yields 8 experimental conditions. In each condition, the subjects are confronted with a report of a statement by a politician.

 Spatial Coverage: UK

Time Method: Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Individuals

Universe: Young people in the UK

Mode of Data Collection: Experiment

Sampling Description: The survey was carried out with a sample of young people (18- to 34-years-old) in the UK. Each experimental condition included 800 respondents, for a total sample of 6,400 respondents.

Data Collection Instruments: Survey experiment

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Dataset 5.2:Survey Experiment - Protest, repression and solidarity across generations

The dataset consists of experimental data on how the perception of repression in protest has a different impact on the attitudes and the mobilization potential of individuals depending on the age cohort. The experiment in particular tested if the experience of repression influences individuals’ attitudes towards protest mobilization and their propensity to participate in such events. The experiment is based on two treatment and three control groups. The two treatment groups were given a text about either young protesters or adult protesters being repressed. Two control groups received a text about either young or adult protesters not being repressed, the third control group did not receive a text.

 Spatial Coverage: Italy

Time Method: Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Individuals

Universe: Population of Italy

Mode of Data Collection: Experiment

Sampling Description: The sample consists of two age groups: young (less than 35 years-old) and non-young (35 years-old or older) respondents. In order to make the sub-samples representative, quotas (regional, sex, age) were applied. Individuals were randomly allocated to each of the five groups (the two treatment groups, plus the three control groups).

Data Collection Instruments: Experiment survey

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Dataset 5.3:Experiment -The influence of police brutality on political participation of youth

The database consists of experimental data on whether and under what circumstances the perception of political authority as associated with brutality and the use of direct force influence political participation of youth. A vignette experiment was conducted with a sample of 1000 (961) young people aged 18-35 which were randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group. The first experimental group (N=310) read a fictional story about a man who was beaten at the police station during his interrogation, the second experimental group (N=340) read an article about the history of the Polish Police Day and the control group (N=311) read an excerpt of “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad (sailor story).

 Spatial Coverage: Poland

Time Method: Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Individuals

Universe: Young people in Poland

Mode of Data Collection: Experiment

Sampling Description: On a sample of 961 adult young people aged 18-35, randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group.

Data Collection Instruments: Survey experiment

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Dataset 5.4: Survey Experiment - How blaming attribution effects on the type of political participation

 The dataset consists of experimental data which tested if blame attribution shapes the political participation of different age groups. More concretely, the experiment looked at the correlation between issue (water privatization or pesticides), blame attribution to either the government or civil society and the type of political participation (institutional vs. non-institutional).The experiment consisted of a two-phase vignette experiment with 1200 respondents from Switzerland.

Spatial Coverage: Switzerland

Time Method: Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Individuals

Universe: National population

Mode of Data Collection: Survey experiment

Sampling Description: 1200 respondents from Switzerland, the sample was divided as follows: 50% aged 18- to 34-years-old and the other 50% made up of people 35- to 65-years-old.

Data Collection Instruments: Questionnaire

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Dataset 5.5: Survey Experiment -Effects of (mis)perceptions of inequality on youths’ social trust and political engagement

The dataset consists of experimental data testing to what extent perceptions of inequality depend on cultural orientations and related interpretative patterns. This survey experiment manipulated two main variables: Level of inequality perception (High, low) followed by contextual and dispositional explanations of inequality free to vary as a function of priming inequality. Individual SES, cultural orientation and insecure identity were also measured. After viewing a graph on inequality, participants were asked to indicate how important they think the contribution of each of the following factors is to growing (decreasing) economic disparity: Contextual explanations: inheritance, political influence, economic structure of society, personal background, educational opportunity, wages, and prejudice and discrimination.  Dispositional items: ambition, ability and talent, hard work, effort, and money management skills. Contextual or dispositional attributions were continuous moderators. Mixed model analyses were utilized

Spatial Coverage: Greece

Time Method: Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Individuals

Universe: Young people in Greece

Mode of Data Collection: Experiment

Sampling Description: The sample comprised 1003 participants from Greece (493 men Mage = 39.75, SD = 12.55) whose responses were collected via an online survey (Qualtrics). After screening for responses to the attention question (‘Ι do not speak Greek’, the final sample was reduced to 846 participants (408 men, 3 gender missing, Mage = 40.49, SD = 12.57). There was an almost equal number of men and women participating, and age ranged from 18 to 65 randomly allocated in one of the two experimental conditions/manipulations. (See Phase B).

Data Collection Instruments: Questionnaire

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Dataset 5.6: Survey Experiment -Peer pressure and political action

The dataset consists of experimental data on the effect of peer pressure on young people’s political participation. In addition, data on participants (sociodemographic, political views, and demonstration engagement and political priorities) was collected. The experiment built on four conditions tested on two equally large age groups randomly assigned to one of the conditions. Three treatments were developed to measure different forms and levels of peer pressure: vignettes passing information (low mobilizing pressure), a second one included a strong appeal (high mobilizing pressure) and a third one a dissuasive message (high demobilizing pressure-). Those in the control group received no treatment and hence went directly from the pre-treatment to the post treatment questions.  Concerning the political issue at stake, we opted for a fictive demonstration organized by Greenpeace targeting climate policies.

Spatial Coverage: Germany and Spain

Time Method: Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Individuals

Universe: National population of Germany and Spain

Mode of Data Collection: Experiment

Sampling Description: The subsamples included respondents from Germany (1,220 completed surveys) and Spain (1,197 completed surveys). From the polling institute we required the sample to be split not only between the two countries, but also according to age groups (50% below and 50% over 35) and between the four conditions (control group, persuasive, pressure, neutral information, dissuasive pressure).

Data Collection Instruments: Experiment survey

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite?EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Dataset 5.7: Survey Experiment - Democratic freedom for everyone? (conjoint experiment)

The aim of this experiment was to study whether young people facing inequalities are more eager to restrict democratic freedoms for groups representing specific political opinions than well-off members of their cohort or older people in general. This conjoint experiment was conducted with 1000 respondents in Germany, Spain, and Sweden. Respondents were faced with two different profiles of peaceful demonstrations that have a set of variables with randomly assigned attributes and were asked to choose the demonstration they would rather prohibit. Each respondent was asked to repeat the same task six times. This procedure allowed to assess the relative influence of each attribute on the prohibition of demonstration and determine what combination of variables increases the willingness to prohibit a demonstration.

 Spatial Coverage: Germany, Spain and Sweden

Time Method: Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Individuals

Universe: National population of Germany, Spain and Sweden

Mode of Data Collection: Experiment

Sampling Description: Representative sample of 1000 to 1042 respondents per country

Data Collection Instruments: Experiment survey

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite?EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Further Documentation on the datasets 5: Integrated report

 

Dataset 7: Social Media Analysis

The data consists of information retrieved from Twitter concerning debates on climate change and gender. These two topics were chosen because they are current issues in public sphere, the EU prioritizes them in its youth strategy and both issues are global but the impact local/national scale. The interactions between Twitter accounts were analyzed based on three types of actions offered by the platform: retweets, replies and mentions. In addition, gender and age range of the users were inferred as additional demographic information.

Spatial Coverage: France, Italy, UK, Germany, Poland, Greece, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland

Time Method: Cross-sectional

Analysis Unit: Social media posts

Universe:  All debates on climate change and on gender on twitter

Mode of Data Collection: Data were collected from the Twitter streaming API using Kalium; additional demographic information was inferred using M3Inference.

Sampling Description: The dataset includes all the data obtained through the Twitter streaming API with query terms related to Fridaysforfuture and feminism in different languages.

Data Collection Instruments: Kalium tool to access the Twitter streaming API.

Further Documentation: Integrated report

How to Get the Data? To access the dataset, click here

How to Cite? EURYKA – Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Political Claims Analysis [Dataset]. Distributed by FORS, Lausanne, 2022

 

Selected Publications:

Grasso, Maria, and Marco Giugni (eds.). 2022. “Youth Doing Politics in Times of Increasing Inequalities". Politics 42. Special Issue.

Giugni, Marco, and Maria Grasso (eds.). 2021. Youth and Politics in Times of Increasing Inequalities. Houndmills: Palgrave.

Kousis, Maria, and Marco Giugni (eds.). 2020. “Claiming and Framing Youth in the Public Domain During Times of Increasing Inequalities. American Behavioral Scientist 64. Special Issue.