The Italian Online Probability Panel (IOPP) is the first initiative in Italy designed to produce high-quality longitudinal survey data for monitoring social transformations. Developed in alignment with leading European experiences—such as LISS, ELIPSS, GESIS panel, etc.—it brings Italy into the broader landscape of advanced survey infrastructures, enabling both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Launched in early 2025, IOPP is based on an offline recruitment strategy using a push-to-web approach, drawing from a nationally representative probability sample of approximately 10,000 individuals aged 18–74 from the national population register. The data collection is structured around five annual CAWI waves, centred on a core questionnaire that tracks stable constructs such as family and housing, health, education, employment, income, leisure, social integration, and political attitudes. These are complemented by rotating or one-time modules developed through open calls to the research community. To ensure inclusivity, the panel also integrates offline participants through paper questionnaires sent via postal mail. The calibration phase is expected to conclude by the end of 2025, with the panel fully operational from 2026. Data will be released in compliance with FAIR and Open Science principles with the aim of offering a collaborative infrastructure, which encourages contributions from a wide range of stakeholders, including researchers, policymakers, and public institutions.

Online Probability Panels (OPPs) have emerged as essential research infrastructures for social sciences, offering robust tools for longitudinal analysis and evidence-based policy-making. However, the growing role of the Open Science movement demands systematic evaluation of their compliance. This study compares major European OPPs—including LISS, GESIS, the GIP, ELIPSS, and the Swedish and Norwegian Citizen Panels—focusing on their practices of openness, recruitment, sampling, and maintenance. Through a qualitative analysis of public documentation and methodological reports, the study examines how their diverse approaches influence data accessibility, inclusivity, and long-term usability. Our findings highlight substantial variability across panels, reflecting the interplay between national contexts, governance models, technological infrastructures, and methodological choices related to recruitment, sampling, and panel maintenance. Some panels demonstrate stronger alignment with Open Science values—promoting transparency, interoperability, and inclusive engagement—while others operate within more constrained frameworks shaped by institutional or structural limitations. This comparative analysis contributes to the understanding of OPPs as evolving knowledge infrastructures and provides a reference framework for future panel development. In doing so, it offers valuable insights for enhancing the role of OPPs in advancing open and socially engaged research practices.

Secondary data represent a vital components in the toolkit of social scientists. Among them, panel and longitudinal data are especially valuable for observing changes within a sample population over time. This chapter aims to highlight the power of these data sources by which social scientists can uncover valuable insights that inform policy decisions, shape interventions, and contribute to our understanding of the world. To be more effective and useful for the purposes of use by public institutions or academies and research institutions in the extemporaneous reading of social phenomena, the characteristic of the speed with which the phenomena studied are detected and analyzed constitutes a significant added value which makes Research Infrastructures on longitudinal and panel data in social science, unique in its kind, and is inserted into a lack of information that is crucial.

COVID-19 has turned our lives upside down. The first lockdown occurred in Italy in the spring of 2020, drastically disrupting people’s daily schedules, work schedules, socialisation, and relationships with co-workers, family and friends. To overcome physical isolation, collect impressions and keep a record of the period, the “How are you?” online questionnaire has been designed as a potential conversation among friends during home confinement for all but essential reasons. What impact this situation had on people? The study investigates some of the social and relational consequences the first lockdown in Italy had on a group of professionals in terms of similarities and differences regarding changes and limitations on their work and daily routines, primarily focusing on the emotions felt at that time. Text mining techniques have been applied to almost one hundred replies, as well as an unsupervised method of emotion analysis; the latter is used for the entire sample and a subgroup consisting only of female scientists. Our findings show that during the Spring 2020 lockdown, a moment of physical and relational confinement was bear, causing bewilderment due to several factors: in terms of work-life balance, the overlap between public and private space, and the established daily routine to return, while regarding the relational sphere, the lack of physical contacts and interactions - such as support for dependent elderly - that technology has only partly been able to fill. Two primary emotions emerge from the entire sample: acceptance of the virus containment measures imposed and restlessness about the present and future. The group of female scientists appears more optimistic. The experienced situation of deprivation of individual freedoms such as movement and social contact, however, has brought along a new awareness of the frailties of our society, refocusing attention on the importance of scientific research, ecological transition, and, more generally, a reflection on our development model.

The Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) is a research infrastructure that generates harmonised, high-quality, and timely data on families and individual life-course trajectories. Its flagship instrument—the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS)—provides comparable evidence on demographic behaviour, intergenerational relationships, and the evolving social roles of women and men, thereby enabling scholars and policy-makers to address pressing societal challenges. Currently, a second round of comparative data collection is ongoing and will deliver fresh insights into persistent low fertility, the increasingly complex transition to adulthood, and new forms of family solidarity. In Italy, Wave 1 of the second round started in summer 2025, supported by the PNRR projects “Fostering Open Science in Social Science Research” (FOSSR) and “Aging Well in an Aging Society” (Age-It).