Carried out every four years by Eurofound, EQLS examines the objective circumstances of European citizen's life and attitudes about these circumstances as well as their lives in general. In 2018, the SRC IU conducted a comprehensive external quality assessment of the 4th EQLS, assessing both processes and outputs and providing a series of recommendations for future Eurofound surveys.
The report first assesses survey process quality using a Quality Assurance Plan developed by Eurofound that includes a number of specific quality indicators linked to the quality framework and quality dimensions used by the European Statistical System (Relevance and Timeliness, Accuracy, Punctuality, Accessibility, and Coherence and Comparability). Next, it examines the quality of the main survey outputs including the final source questionnaire in English and the final dataset. The report then assesses adherence of the 4th EQLS to a set of best practices for 3MC (multinational, multiregional, and multicultural) surveys on the basis of recent methodological literature and examples of other comparable 3MC surveys in the European context. Recommendations & organized by relevance to the Total Survey Error framework as well as relative cost and potential impact on improving data quality & are provided for improving the survey in the future.
European Quality of Life Survey 2016: Quality Assessment