The Public Opinion and Mass Communication Research Centre (POMCRC) was founded in 1966 as part of the Faculty of Social Sciences. It is the leading Slovenian survey research institution, particularly in the fields of sociology, political science and public health. Since 1968, the Centre has been conducting annual general social surveys which are the key source of empirical data for the national social science community. Over a period of 48 years, an extensive set of longitudinal indicators has been composed. They include, among many others, indicators of quality of life, social stratification, value orientations, public health, immigration, political culture, role of government and media engagement. Apart from designing and fielding national survey projects, the Centre is a regular partner in a number of widely acclaimed comparative surveys, such as the European Social Survey, World Values Survey, International Social Survey Programme, European Values Survey, Cross-national Survey of Electoral Systems, as well as several other bilateral and multilateral projects. Through this participation, the POMCRC has amassed extensive expertise in conducting cross-national survey research, ranging from questionnaire design and translation to comparability issues and reporting, making itself into a methodological knowledge hub for both students and researchers.
Major achievements
• Since 1968, the Centre has carried out The Slovenian Public Opinion survey (SPO), the central infrastructural programme for Slovenian social sciences in the domain of attitudinal data. Surveying public values and orientations in the decades before the transition was a unique historical phenomenon among societies of the former Eastern bloc. From the outset, the programme’s goal was to create and collect a time series of subjective well-being and quality-of-life indicators and employ them to measure and – if possible – explain general patterns of political, social, cultural and economic attitudes and behaviours of the population. To date, its principal mission remains monitoring relevant structural characteristics and processes in Slovenian society within the broader context of the European and global environment. Data and findings for the past five decades are organised and presented in the Centre’s comprehensive “Values in Transition” book series.
• Since 2006, the POMCRC has represented the University of Ljubljana in the role of a partner institution in the European Social Survey (ESS) managing consortium. The ESS is an academically driven cross-national survey that measures the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of diverse populations in more than 30 nations and has been conducted every 2 years across Europe since 2001. The survey was awarded Europe’s top annual science award, the Descartes prize, in 2005 for its methodological achievements. In 2013, the ESS was awarded the status of a European infrastructure, ESS ERIC, with its headquarters at City University London. The POMCRC has fielded all eight rounds of the European Social Survey and leads the central tasks of bibliographic monitoring and academic outreach.
• In 2013, the POMCRC research team received the Prometheus of Science for Excellence in Communication awarded by the Slovenian Science Foundation. The award demonstrates the success of the Centre’s efforts to promote empirical social research among scientists, students, policymakers and the general public. This achievement is well reflected in the number of registered users of the European Social Survey based in Slovenia (4,048 in October 1016), namely the highest share per capita among all countries and regions.
