A new coding tool presented at the workshop organized by SERISS with the participation of the WVSA
On February 14-15, 2019 the World Values Survey Association Secretariat contributed to the training workshop on coding, scales and classification for socioeconomic variables in cross-national surveys organized by the Synergies for Europe’s Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences (SERISS) research project. The project coordinated by the European Social Survey and implemented in cooperation with other European survey research programs aims to strengthen and harmonise social science research across Europe by addressing the challenges faced by cross-national survey research and offering new solutions in relation to different aspects of survey design and data collection, data management and curation from a collaborative, cross-national perspective.
The training was organized at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and was a part of the SERISS project’s Work Package 8 “A coding module for socio-economic survey questions”. This work package developed a cross-country harmonised, fast, high-quality and cost-effective coding module for major socioeconomic variables. Occupation, industry, employment status, educational attainment and field of education are core variables in many socio-economic and health surveys, as are the size and intensity of social networks. However, incomparability of national country-specific classifications, expensive post-interview coding, challenging with the correct translation of international scales and classifications constitute numerous obstacles for the coherent and fully compatible coding of sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents in large-scale cross-national surveys. WVSA Secretariat was represented by its Head Ms Kseniya Kizilova who spoke about the WVSA's work on the incorporating the globally-applicable scales for socioeconomic variables into the WVS-7 and WVS-8 survey rounds. While the WVS Association in WVS-7 adopted using the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED-2011) for coding the education level of the respondent, there is still more work required to improve the classifications used for occupation and industry of professional employment.
The workshop featured presentation of the new online tool for the swift and precise identification of the respondent’s level of education and field of education, employment status, occupation and industry. The new tool represented a cross-country harmonised, fast, high-quality and cost-effective coding module for these variables. The module uses a large multi-lingual dictionary with tens of thousands of entries about job titles, industry names, and fields of education and training. Additionally, the module includes country-specific, structured lists of educational qualifications and employment status categories, and provides up-to-date codes for these classifications (a total of 34 languages servicing 99 countries).
The demo-versions of the short questionnaire which by answering a set of around 10 questions will link automatically your education level, occupation and industry with the relevant international classification codes is available here and here. Some parts of the questionnaire can be still under development, but we invite all readers to try the demo-module. The demo-module has been developed by the CentERdata, an eminent research institute, located on the Tilburg University (TiU) campus Please, send your remarks to the CentERdata and SERISS team if you find any errors or problems.
While the online survey tool is still under development and will be finalized in the course of 2019, there is another possibility to explore it by checking the database live search available here for educational qualifications, occupation and industry.
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