Purpose and background

The purpose of the GSN is to organize global studies of social norms, how they vary across societies and change over time, inspired by existing global studies of values and opinions such as the World Values Survey and the International Social Survey Programme. A difference to these general studies is that each study of social norms will be designed to address some specific, theoretically motivated research questions, while at the same time producing rich datasets that may be useful for studying other research questions. The international study of metanorms in 57 countries is a model example. It yielded exciting insights into how metanorms vary across the globe and examined how several cultural theories accounted for this variation. The main results were published in Nature Communications, and the rich dataset continues to be used in other papers. A follow-up study in 43 countries, examining if results changed with the arrival of the pandemic, has been tentatively accepted for publication, pending minor revisions, in the same journal. The international network for global social norms studies is founded on these successful international collaborations.

Hosting institution

The GSN is hosted by the Institute for Futures Studies (IFFS), a research institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The IFFS provides the software (Qualtrics) for study materials and data management.

Leadership

For the first three years, the GSN will be led by Kimmo Eriksson at the Institute for Futures Studies, assisted by an international steering committee consisting of Giulia Andrighetto, Michele Gelfand, Paul Van Lange, and Pontus Strimling. A system for rotating leadership will be developed if the GSN, as we expect, lasts beyond the first three years.

How it works

To be a member of the GSN, you need to be able to distribute Qualtrics-powered studies of social norms to local participants (or find another way of conducting the same study and provide us with the data). Members will be invited to collaborate on studies. In addition to data collection, responsibilities include translation (if required) and local ethics review (if required). There may often be some funding available for the data collection, in which case this will be specified in the invitation to the study. The steering group decides which studies to run in the GSN. Members can propose studies to the steering group. Proposals will be assessed to ensure that the study is sufficiently important and well-designed to warrant data collection through the GSN. Preregistration of hypotheses and analysis for a Primary Publication is required before a study is launched. All members that collect data for a GSN study will be coauthors on its Primary Publication (but not necessarily on any subsequent publications). Data collected for a GSN study may not be used until the Primary Publication is published, at which point the dataset is made public at the GSN website. 

Members who collect data for a GSN study may include an additional module at the end of the survey for their local participants. Members retain full ownership of the data from their own additions.