In this month’s episode, Tom Emery talks to Steven Ruggles (University of Minnesota). Ruggles founded IPUMS, which gives researchers around the world free access to census and survey data. Together they discuss how linking census records, administrative data and surveys can trace lives across generations. They also cover what this means for privacy and public trust.

Affiliations:

• Steven Ruggles – Regents Professor of History and Population Studies at the University of Minnesota, and the Director of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation
• Dr. Tom Emery – Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Useful links:
https://www.ipums.org/

In this episode, Tom Emery talks with Professor Tim Reeskens and Associate Professor Mark Boukes about two of the world's longest-running surveys on social change. Together they explore what decades of data reveal about shifting attitudes toward politics, religion, trust, family, and identity, and whether today's debates about polarisation and cultural divides hold up against the evidence. The conversation also looks at how these surveys are adapting to declining response rates, digital trace data, and the AI era, and what they might tell us about where societies are heading next.

Affiliations:

• Tim Reeskens – Professor of European Values ​​and Societies in the Department of Sociology at Tilburg University. Country lead, European Values Study
• Mark Boukes – Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. Country lead, World Values Survey
• Dr. Tom Emery – Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

In this episode, Tom Emery sits down with Lana Fani, Managing Director of the Netherlands Cohorts Consortium (NCC), to talk about her path into cohort research and what drew her to the NCC. Lana explains why cohort studies are such a powerful tool for health research as well as other fields, and how linking data across cohorts - the NCC's core ambition - could unlock findings a single study could seldom reach on its own. Tom and Lana also dig into an unexpected overlap: how health and social science data are connected, even when the two fields rarely talk to each other.

Affiliations:

• Dr. Lana Fani, MD, Managing Director of the Netherlands Cohorts Consortium
• Dr. Tom Emery - Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Useful links:
https://www.nwo.nl/projecten/fovyr99232
https://amazingerasmusmc.nl/epidemiologie/miljoenen-voor-landelijk-cohortonderzoek-naar-gezond-ouder-worden/