In an era of information overload, both false and true, the ESS and EVS surveys offer an in-depth insight into the attitudes, values, and beliefs of Europeans. Since the quality of measurement is one of the most important factors in conducting these surveys, our thesis focused on the reliability of measurement scales in the context of attitudes toward immigrants, which we first analyzed using a sample of all the countries included in both surveys. In both surveys, the construct "attitudes toward immigrants" is reliable, slightly more so in the ESS survey. In the second part of our analysis, we focused on six selected countries, each with different characteristics. There are no significant differences between the surveys across countries, but there are greater differences between the countries themselves. The most positive attitudes towards immigrants is found in Iceland, while the most negative is in the Czech Republic. In the final part of our analysis, we explored whether the use of different survey methods affects respondents' answers on more sensitive topics, such as attitudes toward immigrants. Researchers face declining participation rates, which is why the fifth wave of the EVS survey in 2017 was conducted using a combination of face-to-face and self-administered surveys. We found that values obtained through self-administered surveys were lower (i.e., more negative) than those obtained through face-to-face interviews. Additionally, the reliability coefficient was higher for the self-administered surveys, leading us to conclude that respondents are less honest in the presence of an interviewer.
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