Report of the 2023 Annual General Meeting of the International Social Survey Programme ISSP, in Reykjavik, Iceland.
By César Morones.
 From April 28 to May 4, 2023, the Annual General Meeting of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) was held in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Iceland is an independent nation with a very strong Scandinavian culture and history.
The other 3 Scandinavian nations are in chronological order Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Each of these 4 nations has its own currency with minimal differences in value between them and the currency is called "Króna", and so there are Danish krone, Swedish krone, Norwegian krone and Icelandic krone.
The Danish, Swedish and Norwegian kroner are worth slightly more than the euro and marginally less than the British pound sterling.
Meanwhile 1 euro is worth 149 Icelandic kronor.
The distance between London and Reykjavik is the same as from Oslo, Norway to Reykjavik, Iceland which is approximately 2,700 kilometers.
Because of its Norwegian roots, Iceland operates the metric decimal system, as well as the fact that cars, buses and trucks have the steering wheel on the left side as it is in most of the Americas and not as it is in the United Kingdom, where the steering wheel is on the right side of the vehicle.
This cannot be said about trains or urban collective subway or streetcar systems, because there are none in Iceland.
Iceland is connected exclusively by 4-lane and 2-lane roads in its slightly more than 100,000 square kilometers of land area.
As a reference, the State of Jalisco in Mexico has an area of 80 thousand square kilometers.
Practically all the Icelandic soil is volcanic as it has several volcanoes and a good part of them are active, therefore, in Iceland there are no trees or pine trees, what there is in the winter is ice and snow, in the summer there is green grass.
There is little effort to plant pine trees in Iceland, because it is a very expensive process; abundant and fertile soil has to be brought from places more than a thousand kilometers away from the island.
Iceland is so called in Spanish because it is an island of only 100,000 square kilometers and in English it is called "Iceland" which means "land of ice".
Reykjavik is both the capital and the only city in Iceland. It is reached by sailing the North Sea or by air. The mighty and ceaseless North Sea is suffocated by the large bay of Reykjavík.
The population of Reykjavík is just under 500,000 people and few people live outside Reykjavík.
In late April and early May in the middle of spring, the air temperature in Iceland ranges between 0 and 5 degrees Celsius, so it is necessary to wear a coat and many other precautions.
Our hosts and organizers of the ISSP Annual Meeting at the University of Iceland treated us warmly, kindly and very generously.
In the experience of IMOMÉXICO-ISSP since 2000 in Kaunas, Sweden, the Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland has been one of the best.
In terms of substance, it was voted in favor of the return to the ISSP of the Netherlands with the same institution that had previously been part of it, and the University of Waterloo of Canada also came to this Summit, attending for the first time with the right to speak, and by 2024 it will also have the right to vote.
The 2024 Annual Meetings were voted to be held in Sydney, Australia and 2025 in the Kruger National Park in South Africa.
The focus of the discussion at the 2023 Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland, was the questionnaire for the "Digital Societies" module to be implemented in 2024 for the first time in ISSP's history.
For this reason, as it was the first time, the discussion was deeper and more intense with respect to modules that have been applied before.
Mexico's participation through the IMO was to take into account the phenomenon of Gentrification, which is a social process in which the so-called "digital nomads" displace the residents and businesses of a neighborhood in large cities, a process that is directly affecting Mexico and that began in the period of the global pandemic and which, far from disappearing, is intensifying.
In general, the draft questionnaire presented by the drafting group coordinated by Austria, sub-coordinated by France and completed by the Philippines, South Africa and South Korea, was to Mexico's satisfaction, since it has an approach for a friendly and flexible application to the respondents in which the nations that are not as developed as the majority of the ISSP are, is quite assertive.
The final questionnaire of the "Digital Societies" module approved for application in 2024 covers the Internet habit or not of the respondents and their households, that is, it takes into account not only those who are Internet users but also those who are not users and for what reason.
It also takes into account the Internet as a habit that in a high consumption is harmful to physical and mental health.
It considers age ranges and takes into account aspects such as artificial intelligence and the use of robots to replace tasks that until now have been performed by humans, their advantages and threats.
 It also considers aspects of new technologies for personal application, their use, work facilities, better opportunities for the next generations or the fact of the great human dependence on these technologies and their vulnerability.
All of the above and more, in the form of a 68-item, multiple-choice questionnaire that will be answered by respondents in the 45 ISSP member nations.
Finally, the general draft of the questionnaire of module 2025 "Work Orientation V", which will be applied for the 5th time, was presented by Germany and approved by the plenary of the assembly in general, without discussion.
|
 |
