printRussian Social Survey Comparable with ESS – Methodology, Results and Outlook
Andreenkova A.V.
Doc. Sci. (Sociol.), Senior Researcher, Institute for Comparative Social Research (CESSI), Moscow, Russia anna.andreenkova@cessi.ru
Andreenkov V.G.
Cand. Sci. (Phylos.), Director, CESSI, Institute for Comparative Social Research, Moscow, Russia vladimir.andreenkov@cessi.ru
Andreenkova A.V., Andreenkov V.G. Russian Social Survey Comparable with ESS – Methodology, Results and Outlook. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2026. No 10. P. 31-43
The analysis of the 20-year history of one of the largest monitoring projects, the Russian Social Survey (RSS), comparable to the European Social Survey (ESS) – one of the largest cross-sectional trend projects in social sciences in Russia, showed the impressive impact of the project. Databases include a broad range of social indicators and questions collected in the surveys of general population on national probability random samples are open for usage for the research community. The surveys are conducted by the Institute of Comparative social research – CESSI bi-annually since 2006 and managed by the academic Board included the representatives of different academic institutions and leading scholars. Data of nine surveys has been compiled on more than 150 key indicators of social development, including information on work and employment, family, social structure, sociopolitical attitudes and behavior, interpersonal and institutional trust, life satisfaction and other aspects of life. In some rounds of the project the data were collected on the key topics in social sciences – migration, d emocracy understanding, health inequality, timing of life and age norms, social fairness, gender identity and others. A bibliographic analysis revealed more than 250 publications in scientific journals and monographs based on RSS data, focusing mainly on comparing Russia with other countries on values, subjective well-being indicators, social structure and some other aspects (over 70%) and on trends and dynamics of social indicators within Russia. RSS is considered a new step in forming advanced research infrastructure for social sciences – preparation of empirical data on multidisciplinary and multi-theoretical grounds for long-term collective use. The challenges for infrastructural projects in Russia are the lack of stable funding and increasing complexity of collecting, archiving and disseminating sociological survey data.
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