The SERISS team made some film interviews with each work package leader at the kick-off meeting of the project, which took place on 21-22 September 2015 in London, UK.

Here are some extracts from each work package leader who is representing CESSDA in the SERISS project.

Watch the short video interviews from the launch:

• Ivana Versic explaining the role of CESSDA in SERISS

"Social sciences and social scientists are at the heart of addressing all major challenges in Europe today. To the greatest extent and with the fewest constraints as possible, all scientific data which is publicly funded should be open. Finally, our archives should be future proof.”

• Brian Kleiner on WP4 "Interactive tools for cross-national surveys"

“Even the most well-resourced international surveys are still often working with very basic tools. WP4 of SERISS is entirely devoted to the extension and improvement of existing tools that should ultimately help make data and metadata production and delivery quicker and more effective, thus better serving the scientific community.” (Brian Kleiner, FORS)

• Sebastian Netscher on WP5 "Training and Dissemination"

“We will develop a set of tools like an online management platform or a questionnaire design and development tool. To ensure that the research community can use these tools, and that researchers benefit from the SERISS project, we will provide a series of trainings, training materials, guidelines and manuals. We will also investigate data management trainings, taking new forms of data, like social media data, into account and the challenges in regard to legal, ethical and quality issues.” (Sebastian Netscher, GESIS)

• Vigdis Kvalheim on WP6 "New forms of data: legal, ethical and quality matters"

“SERISS comes at a time when the digital revolution has resulted in a mass increase in data types and sources potentially available for social survey research, such as social media data, transactional data, administrative data and not least also data from biobanks. Clearly data from these sources have a huge potential to enrich the more traditional survey data and thus make social service more robust and strengthening its productive and explanatory power.” (Vigdis Kvalheim, NSD)

Lastly, Vigdis Kvalheim sums up the project in a few words:

“The overall purpose is to prepare the social sciences for the future, that is making sure that the social sciences, including the network of CESSDA archives, are well-equiped and able to use these data in a qualified and efficient way and in line with the data protection framework. So it’s all about preparing the social sciences for the future."

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