Dr. J J G Schmeets

Biography

Hans Schmeets has worked at Statistics Netherlands for 20 years as a project manager involved in numerous projects, resulting in 200 publications in the field of social cohesion, elections, political participation, volunteering work, ethnic minorities, religion, trust, values, living conditions, survey methodology, and measures to increase response rates and reduce nonresponse bias. Currently, he is responsible for statistical research dissemination concerning a wide range of topics related to the new spearhead of Social Cohesion in the Department of Statistical Analysis, which has 60 employees, the majority of whom hold a PhD degree. Since April 2008, he has been a part-time professor at Maastricht University, holding a special chair in Social Statistics in the Department of Political Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. In this capacity, he collaborates with colleagues from the Faculties of Humanities and Science, including the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, in the empirical study of social cohesion. His aim is to develop the reputation of empirical quantitative research using large-scale databases, mainly submitted by Statistics Netherlands. He also aims to strengthen collaboration between universities and expertise centres, such as the Scientific Research Documentation Centre and the Netherlands Institute of Social Research. Moreover, he is a statistical election analyst in the core team of Election Observation Missions and has participated in 50 EOMs for international organisations, such as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). In this role, he has developed methods to assess whether elections meet international democratic standards based on observations from international election observers. Hans Schmeets is a member of the advisory board of the Foundation Election Studies in the Netherlands, in charge of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies in 1989, 1994, and 2006.

Research Interests