Agency for Social Analyses (ASA) and Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IPS – BAS)

Bulgarian ISSP membership is based on an equal partnership, consisting of the Agency for Social Analyses (ASA) and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IPS – BAS).

AGENCY FOR SOCIAL ANALYSES (ASA)

Founded in 1994, the Agency for Social Analyses (ASA) is an independent, non-profit making, public policy-oriented Think-Tank organization. The Agency has excellence in qualitative and quantitative research methods, innovating analyses, and peer reviews on social, economic, and political issues.

The ASA is specialized in social and institutional assessment, in development of social marketing programs, and in design, conduct and in-depth analyses of qualitative and quantitative data on behalf of various national and international public bodies, including academic, scientific and research communities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, trade unions, companies, foundations.

The Agency monitors the changes and trends of the hottest ethnic, social, moral, economic, and political issues at national and cross-national perspectives. The subjects covered by its activities are wide-ranging, but for the last years its focus has been on social inequalities (gender, ethnic, generational, religion, rural v/s urban), poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and inclusion, ethnic, national and European identities, Roma issues, labour market and employment, quality of life. The database of the ASA consists of highly complex datasets of social data, covering wide-range social, economic, and political issues for the period 1994 – 2020, including the only in the country dataset of subjective poverty.

The Agency works in cooperation and collaboration with leading academic and research organizations, experts, social, economic and political scientists from all over the world. The ASA inspires an open dialogue between social scientists, researchers, opinion leaders and policy makers.

The ASA has been well recognised by the world research community as the national representative for Bulgarian participation in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) for over 25 years, and in the European Social Survey (ESS) from 2005 to 2019. Among its over 40 successfully completed research project are 20 ISSP modules and 5 ESS waves, some of which have been implemented jointly with the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at BAS. 

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IPS – BAS)

IPS – BAS is a member of the Consortium “ESS for Bulgaria”. The Consortium is established within the framework of the Bulgaria National Roadmap of Scientific Infrastructure. Member partners are: University of National and World Economy (UNWE), Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IPS-BAS), Bulgarian Sociological Association (BAS) and Union of Economists in Bulgaria (UEB).Within the IPS-BAS is established a Center for Empirical Social Research, specialized in development of innovative survey and research methods, actual forms and technique of data collection, wide implementation of statistical analyses and all range of activities for design, organization, and realization of empirical research projects. The Center is highly respected for its significant expertise in successfully completion of both ad hock and longitudinal surveys. For the last two decades, ISP-BAS has successfully completed more than 30 national surveys. Some of them were part of the major European and world long term survey programmes like ESS and ISSP modules.

The Consortium has assigned the Center for Empirical Social Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology to do the terrain work for ESS and ISSP surveys, starting from 2020 on. The latter specializes in the development of methodologies, data collection, statistical analysis and all range of activities for the methodological design, preparation and implementation of empirical research projects.

The Canter has its own network of interviewers and supervisors with more that 200 people trained to work with CAPI (computer-assisted personal interviewing), CATI (computer-assisted telephone interviewing) and CAWI (computer-assisted web interviewing) studies. As such the Center is responsible to complete the preliminary methodological activities and the fieldwork needed for the ESS and ISSP national representative surveys in Bulgaria.