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The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has become increasingly significant and contested. Through an examination of ECHR Article 9, its drafting history, and the related jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Caroline K. Roberts challenges the classic approach to this right in the literature. Roberts argues that claims that there is, or should be, a clear binary and hierarchical distinction between the absolutely protected internal realm and the qualified external realm in this right are not founded textually or jurisprudentially. Rather, the primary materials suggest that the internal and external aspects are deeply interrelated, and this is reflected in the ECtHR's nuanced and holistic approach to ECHR Article 9 protection. This comprehensive, rigorous and up-to-date reappraisal of ECHR Article 9 and the related ECtHR jurisprudence will be essential reading for academics and practitioners.

AbstractThis conceptual review paper takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of self‐injury in families. The overall goal is to begin integrating siloed bodies of knowledge from empirical work based on findings from individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities and self‐injury. The research literature on self‐injury and family‐level variables is reviewed, including dyadic and individual‐level variables with potential bidirectional impact on the family. Then, opportunities for knowledge translation are explored with respect to the pragmatic goal of developing family‐level interventions for self‐injurious behavior in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Four opportunities for knowledge translation are highlighted: family patterns, parenting behavior, attachment relationships, and emotional experience.

Winner of the 2006 The Descartes Prize for excellence in collaborative scientific research . Written by members of the design and implementation team for the groundbreaking European Social Survey (ESS), reviews current best practice in the conduct of cross-national, cross-cultural quantitative research

"For landline telephone surveys in particular, undercoverage has been a growing problem. However, research regarding the relative contributions of socio-demographic bias and other composition effects is scarce. We propose to address this issue by analyzing an election survey which used a sample from a register-based sampling frame containing basic socio-demographic information and to which telephone numbers were subsequently matched. With respect to socio-demographic representation of the final sample, we find that difficult to match groups are also difficult to contact, while those who cooperate tend to have different characteristics. We find bias due to undercoverage to be of greater magnitude than noncontact bias, while noncooperation falls between the two. As for substantive variables, both additional efforts to match missing telephone numbers and the construction of better weights are successful in closing the gap between survey estimates of voting behavior and true values from the election results." (author's abstract)

Different factors are known to affect the comparability of multinational, multicultural and multiregional ('3MC') survey data. These include factors relevant to the design of the questionnaire in different contexts (such as cultural differences in how a concept is understood, inaccurate or approximate translations of concepts, and variant adaptations to question formats). Others include factors relating to the survey design in general and how it is implemented across contexts (such as sample design, choice of mode(s), and contact strategies). Together, they contribute item, method and construct biases that can affect the invariance of composite measures. While research to date has looked at the effects of these factors on measurement invariance individually, there have been few attempts to compare them directly and assess their relative impact. To illustrate how this can be done, the present paper tests for measurement invariance in a subjective wellbeing measure across question formats, modes, languages, and countries, combining European Social Survey data from designed and natural experiments (resulting from the use of variant question formulations and translations) from Germany, Switzerland and France. Overall, we find translation errors, language and culture to be bigger sources of non-equivalence than question format and mode. The findings have implications for both survey designers making decisions about optimal resource allocation in the design of 3MC studies, as well as for comparative analysts interested in comparing countries with shared languages and interpreting cross-group differences.

"The pursuit of high response rates to minimise the threat of nonresponse bias continues to dominate decisions about resource allocation in survey research. Yet a growing body of research has begun to question this practice. In this study, we use previously unavailable data from a new sampling frame based on population registers to assess the value of different methods designed to increase response rates on the European Social Survey in Switzerland. Using sampling data provides information about both respondents and nonrespondents, making it possible to examine how changes in response rates resulting from the use of different fieldwork methods relate to changes in the composition and representativeness of the responding sample. We compute an R-indicator to assess representativity with respect to the sampling register variables, and find little improvement in the sample composition as response rates increase. We then examine the impact of response rate increases on the risk of nonresponse bias based on Maximal Absolute Bias (MAB), and coefficients of variation between subgroup response rates, alongside the associated costs of different types of fieldwork effort. The results show that increases in response rate help to reduce MAB, while only small but important improvements to sample representativity are gained by varying the type of effort. These findings lend further support to research that has called into question the value of extensive investment in procedures aimed at reaching response rate targets and the need for more tailored fieldwork strategies aimed both at reducing survey costs and minimising the risk of bias." (author's abstract)

AbstractProbability‐based web surveys are increasingly challenged by decreasing response rates and high costs. A cheap and convenient solution is to use 'opt‐in' online panels, which are based on non‐probability samples. However, the quality of the data such panels produce is subject to debate. To improve our understanding in this regard, especially in the Swiss context, we compare conditional distributions of sociodemographic variables and voting behaviour of two probability‐based web surveys and three opt‐in panels. Indeed, point estimates in opt‐in panels are well studied, but bivariate relationships between variables, arguably more important for researchers in political science research, have received less attention. Our analysis has the advantage of most variables of interest being included in the sampling frame and thus the true values are known for each conditional distribution. Our results show a lack of consistency and reproducibility in the results from opt‐in panels, which leads us to recommend care when using this type of data.

Herbert Simon's (1956) concept of satisficing provides an intuitive explanation for the reasons why respondents to surveys sometimes adopt response strategies that can lead to a reduction in data quality. As such, the concept rapidly gained popularity among researchers after it was first introduced to the field of survey methodology by Krosnick and Alwin (1987), and it has become a widely cited buzzword linked to different forms of response error. In this article, we present the findings of a systematic review involving a content analysis of journal articles published in English-language journals between 1987 and 2015 that have drawn on the satisficing concept to evaluate survey data quality. Based on extensive searches of online databases, and an initial screening exercise to apply the study's inclusion criteria, 141 relevant articles were identified. Guided by the theory of survey satisficing described by Krosnick (1991), the methodological features of the shortlisted articles were coded, including the indicators of satisficing analyzed, the main predictors of satisficing, and the presence of main or interaction effects on the prevalence of satisficing involving indicators of task difficulty, respondent ability, and respondent motivation. Our analysis sheds light on potential differences in the extent to which satisficing theory holds for different types of response error, and highlights a number of avenues for future research.

Sociology

Abstract
Smartphones present many interesting opportunities for survey research, particularly through the use of mobile data collection applications (apps). There is still much to learn, however, about how to integrate apps in general population surveys. Recent studies investigating hypothetical willingness to complete mobile data collection tasks via an app suggest there may be substantial resistance, in particular, due to concerns around data privacy. There is not much evidence about how privacy concerns influence actual decisions to participate in app-based surveys. Theoretical approaches to understanding privacy concerns and survey participation decisions would suggest that the influence of the former over the latter is likely to vary situationally. In this paper, we present results from a methodological experiment conducted in the context of a three-wave probability-based online panel survey of the general population as part of the 2019 Swiss Election Study ("Selects") testing different ways of recruiting participants to an app. Questions included at wave 1 about online data privacy concerns and comfort sharing different types of data with academic researchers allow us to assess their impact on both hypothetical willingness to download a survey app for completing questionnaires, to take and share photos, and to share the smartphone's GPS location and actual completion of these tasks. Our findings confirm that general concerns about online data privacy do influence hypothetical willingness to complete mobile data collection tasks, but may be overridden by how comfortable people feel about sharing specific types of data with researchers. When it comes to actual compliance with task requests, however, neither privacy concerns nor comfort sharing data seem to matter. We conclude with recommendations for exploring these relationships further in future app-based studies.