Providing Data on the European Level

Abstract

This paper reviews the potential demand for and the provision of European data for social scientific research. The concept of data provision is defined broadly, covering the ease with which specific types of data can be discovered, interpreted, readily understood and accessed by researchers.

The paper is structured in the following way. The next section addresses the issue of why researchers need European (as opposed to national) data resources. This leads in to a short section discussing the potential demand for data at the European level. The main section focuses on the nature of various data resources. Finally, the paper concludes with an assessment of the need for new and/or improved data infrastructures and suggests where efforts could be focussed to realise such needs.