MANILA, Philippines?This week I was in Chicago for the annual meeting of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), hosted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) and the University of Chicago. The ISSP (www.issp.org) is a network of 44 institutes that commit themselves to jointly conducting a national survey on a common topic, using a common questionnaire, for the sake of cross-country analysis. Each member does its own fund-raising. The ISSP global data-sets are open for public research.
NORC, representing the United States, was one of four initial members of the ISSP when it was founded 24 years ago. Social Weather Stations (SWS) became the 12th member of the ISSP in 1990; we hosted the ISSP?s 1998 annual meeting, held in Manila. Of the 26 countries that began doing ISSP surveys no later than 1996, the Philippines is one of only 10 that have never failed to field the ISSP survey.
Saturday: The meeting begins with a reception hosted by Fr. Andrew Greeley at a function room of the John Hancock building, where he has an apartment. Fr. Andrew, a diocesan priest, is a sociologist and a prime mover of surveys on religion. One of his projects, which SWS joined, surveyed attitudes in Catholic countries towards marriage for priests, women in the clergy, and other reformist proposals.
Aside from his many scientific papers and religious pieces, Fr. Andrew continues to write novels, and a newspaper column each week. Apropos labeling by media of Catholics as prejudiced, this week he writes in the Chicago Sun-Times that, through the years, Catholics have been ahead of Protestants?though behind Jews?in measures of racial tolerance.
The guest of honor at the reception is Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. He thanks the social surveyors for collectively helping him to better understand how religion figures in peoples? lives. Cardinal George is an Oblate; he calls our own Oblate archbishop, Orlando Quevedo, his friend.
Sunday: Taiwanese sociologist Tony Tam, a University of Chicago Ph.D., has a paper saying that advances in human capital research by economists like Nobel winner James Heckman (incidentally, one of my classmates in Chicago in 1965) are showing that non-cognitive personal traits developed in childhood, such as the capacity for perseverance, are as powerful as education in predicting future success in one?s employment and personal career. He thus urges the ISSP members to adopt certain optional survey questions to measure such character traits in the coming 2009 ISSP survey on Social Inequality. I promise him that SWS will use these optionals.
Monday: Prof. Yanjie Bian, head of social science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, discusses China?s first ISSP survey, to be done in 2009 jointly by HKUST and Renmin University of Beijing. Although the ISSP only requires a national sample of 1,000, they will take a sample of 6,000, partitioned into the ?big three? of Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, 28 capital cities together, and the remaining East, West, and Central.
Dinner is at the apartment of Filipino-American friends Nita and Jim Burris, just off the university, which stretches from 55th to 60th streets on the South Side. On the way there, we pass Barack Obama?s house at 51st and Greenwood, in front of which is a Secret Service van with heavily tinted windows. It is two blocks from my first student apartment, at 51st and Kenwood. Jim is worried that Obama might not win the nomination, but Nita (a dual citizen) is very confident. I think that, as long as he wins the nomination, he will surely win the presidency.
Tuesday: The heart of the annual meeting is the decision-making on the questionnaire for the next year?s survey. Most of the items are easily approved. But there is opposition, which SWS joins, to three questions proposed on monetary value of the respondent?s wealth, which many fear will not be answered truthfully, if at all. Decisions are made by vote, one vote per country. The opposition wins only one of the three votes; c?est la vie.
In the evening, the hosts treat the visitors to a dinner-cruise on Lake Michigan, which gives a magnificent view of the Chicago skyline.
Wednesday: After the questionnaire drafting group for the 2010 Survey on Environment presents their work, the group assigns priorities, by vote, for topics within the survey. The top three are: Importance of environmental issues in the country, Environmentally-relevant behavior, and Energy-sources and climate change.
The group approves, by consensus, a proposal to take Health as the theme for the 2011 Survey. Nominations for the drafting group are made, and voted upon. The Philippines is nominated, but not elected this time?anyway, we have done our fair share, in the drafting groups of earlier ISSP surveys on Religion, National Identity, Environment, Social Inequality, Social Networks, Citizenship, and most recently Leisure Time and Sports.
The secretariat recommends, and the group approves, the membership applications of Argentina and Ukraine. However, Brazil has dropped out, pleading financial problems.
The group congratulates an ISSP pioneer, Roger Jowell of Great Britain, for having been knighted by Queen Elizabeth a few months ago. Sir Roger, who now directs the European Social Survey, is one of the few social scientists to receive this honor?another is Sir Robert Worcester, the public opinion researcher.
Thursday: I leave this pleasant homecoming, content with my autographed copies of Greeley?s books, and my new U of Chicago baseball cap.
* * *
Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph
