Schneider S.L. & Urban J. (2025). A myriad of options: Validity and comparability of alternative international education variables. Survey Methods: Insights from the Field, Special issue ‘Advancing Comparative Research: Exploring Errors and Quality Indicators in Social Research’. Retrieved from https://surveyinsights.org/?p=19796
Education is a key variable in survey-based research, impacting various outcomes and serving as a cornerstone in social stratification research. However, measuring education in cross-national surveys is challenging due to the complexity and variability of educational systems across countries. For comparative research, the education variable does not only need to be valid, but also comparable across countries, which implies a similar degree of validity in different countries. Simultaneously, education measures need to be parsimonious, especially for self-administered surveys.
This study, expanding on previous research, evaluates the validity and comparability of 16 alternative education coding specifications using nearly 400 dependent variables to identify an optimal solution that could serve as a standard. The authors use European Social Survey (ESS) rounds 5 to 10 data, which provide a highly detailed international education variable serving as a benchmark.