Harmonisation across countries in SHARE Workshop on Harmonisation of Social Survey Data for Cross-National Comparison Prague 19. October 2010 Stephanie Stuck MEA, University of Mannheim

Cross-national, Interdisciplinary & Longitudinal Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe

SHARE Population  Residents aged 50 and over & their partners  Wave 1 (2004/05): AT, BE, CH, DE, DK, ES, FR, GR, IL, IT, NL, SE  Wave 2 (2006/07): new countries: CZ, IE, PL  Wave 3 (2008/09) Life Histories  Wave 4 (2010/11): new countries EE, HU, LU, PT, SI 20 Countries

Ex-Ante Harmonisation  Ex-ante harmonisation in SHARE takes place at various levels and all steps of the process  Organisation  Contracts with survey agencies  Interviewer Training  Fieldwork  Questionnaires & Translations  CAPI & SMS (sample management system)  Data processing & releases  Documentation

Organisational Features  Central coordination: MEA, University of Mannheim  Country teams in each SHARE country  Area teams:  Economics  Health  Social Networks  Teams for weights and imputations  Programming and technical data processing: CentERdata (Tilburg, NL)

Survey agencies & fieldwork  Model contracts provided by MEA  Interviewer training is centrally coordinated  3 Train the Trainers (TTT) workshops per wave (pilot, pretest & main survey ( at least 2 days each))  Training contents  Model for national training sessions  Country teams are present at TTTs and national trainings  Common sample management system (SMS)  Information on all households, contacts, refusals, interview status…  Central fieldwork monitoring

Questionnaires & Translations  Generic English versions  Baseline  Longitudinal  End of Life  SHARELIFE  Translated in all SHARE languages  Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, English, French, Flemish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish  Internet based translation tool: LMU (language management utility) developed by CentERdata

Translations Tool LMU

LMU  Generic questionnaire version is displayed on the left side  Translations are entered on the right  Standard answer categories, sequences or fills have to be translated only once  Show cards are derived automatically  Information on status of translation is displayed

Translation Tool LMU

CAPI & SMS Instruments  One common CAPI and SMS program for all  Translations are transferred automatically from LMU  Instruments (and preload) are transferred to survey agencies via central server  Raw data goes back to central server

Data processing  Data processing is coordinated by MEA and done in very close cooperation with country teams to insure harmonised processing  Instructions and program templates are provided by MEA  Country teams write programs  MEA runs all programs centrally  Weights and imputations are computed by special teams for all SHARE countries centrally  Generated variables are produced by MEA

Ex-Ante Harmonisation  Requires a lot of…  Meetings  Coordination  Communication  Discussions  Compromises  Has some limits, therefore we  document country specific deviations  do ex-post harmonisation

Documentation of Country Specifics

Ex-Post Harmonisation  Education: ISCED  Occupation: ISCO  Industry: NACE

 Comments or Questions ?

Thank you !