Country rankings of sociability

Several harmonised surveys, notably the European Social Survey, conducted every two years since 2002, and dedicated modules of living conditions surveys, ask comparable questions about how often people meet those close to them.

Those designs are built for comparison: same questions, same sampling protocols, controlled translation. They are therefore the most solid available on this subject. Their limit lies less in the protocol than in the question itself, whose meaning may vary from one language to another.

Results regularly find higher reported contact frequency in southern European countries than in northern ones, and smaller gaps on measures of felt loneliness.

That combination is instructive: it indicates that frequency and feeling do not move together, a result consistent with the weak correlation established at individual level.

The contrast between the north and south of the continent is an old one in family demography. David Reher described it in 1998 as a contrast between strong and looser family ties, rooted in very different histories of cohabitation and of young adults leaving home.

The meaning of a meeting varies with household structure. In countries where intergenerational cohabitation is frequent, part of the contact occurs at home and is not counted as a meeting.

Response norms also differ: reporting that one sees relatives often may reflect a social expectation, which produces a reporting gap independent of the practice gap. Translating "often" or "close ones" does not guarantee either that respondents understand the same thing.

As with well-being indices, building a ranking means choosing one indicator among several. A country's rank changes depending on whether meeting frequency, network size or reported feeling is used. Each of these choices is defensible; none is neutral.

Those indicators are not interchangeable, and a country may occupy opposite positions depending on which is chosen, something public coverage rarely mentions.

Comparing one country with itself over time, with a constant instrument, is far more reliable than comparing two countries at one date. A country's own reporting biases remain, but they are likely to stay stable from one wave to the next, which partly neutralises them.

That is the use the producing agencies recommend, and it is also what produces the most stable results, notably on the evolution of single-person households and associational participation. These data make it possible to describe trends without claiming to establish a league table.