The Six Country Immigrant Integration Comparative Study

The Six Country Immigrant Integration Comparative Survey (SCIICS) is a large-scale telephone survey conducted in 2008. The aim was to collect comparable data across European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria and Sweden) with different integration policies as well as variation on other variables to enable testing for contextual effects. SCIICS was designed to maximize cross-national data comparability by reducing sources of confounding variance. It employs a double-comparative design which looks at two immigrant groups (Turks and Moroccans) and a comparison group of natives from the six countries mentioned above. The immigrant target groups have been narrowed down to people who migrated in the guest-worker era (before 1975) and their children and grandchildren who were either born in the survey country or moved there before turning 18. To further increase comparability, half of the sample is subjected to an additional regional selection criterion – having an origin in East-or Central Anatolian provinces in Turkey or the former Spanish protectorate in Morocco. The sample was drawn from online telephone directories using onomastic methods. Mobile phone numbers were included as much as possible. In total, nearly 9,000 completed surveys were collected (3,373 native; 3,344 Turkish origin; 2,204 Moroccan origin). This paper discusses the research design, challenges in data collection, and response rates. It also presents the questionnaires and sources of context data.