Data harmonization at all levels
For many research projects and infrastructure tasks, it is necessary to be able to combine data from different sources. Here, the comparability of data across time, countries, survey programs, and measurement instruments must be established and often subsequently improved. GESIS offers comprehensive consulting services and various resources to help you improve the comparability of existing data.
Furthermore, we continuously work to advance methods in the context of data harmonization and to offer new data products. We are open to cooperation requests in these topics.
Our services and tools for your data harmonization
Our tools help you create latent data comparability constructs from the largest survey programs.
QuestionLink provides recoding scripts with which measurement instruments for selected concepts can be made comparable. The focus of QuestionLink lies on German single-item instruments for latent constructs, such as interest, attitudes, subjective evaluations, or values.
Harmonized data - our cumulations
Our research data centers bundle several waves of a survey program and make them available as cumulations or trend files.
ALLBUS Cumulations
The ALLBUS cumulation contains harmonized time series for all data collected at least twice throughout the ALLBUS survey-rounds. The cumulation data are therefore particularly suitable for analyses of time series in studies of social change. For most of the topical modules (e.g., political attitudes, social inequality, etc.), 3 to 4 measurement time-points are now available. Central socio-demographic characteristics have been surveyed even more frequently. The accompanying documentation provides information on changes in question formats and formulations over time.
Eurobarometer Trendfiles
The Eurobarometer is a long-running European survey collection conducted on behalf of the European Commission and the European Parliament. It consists of several sub-series with many repeated questions over time, thus enabling the cross-national analysis of trends for many relevant issues. Therefore, this potential for longitudinal data harmonization has led to several efforts of cumulating the data, at times with direct involvement by GESIS.
ISSP Cumulations
For the ISSP module topics “Role of Government”, “National Identity”, “Religion”, and “Social Inequality” we offer cumulated data sets. They are designed to facilitate cross-national comparative analyses over time and cover up to five waves of social attitudes and behavior data over more than three decades. Such trend files contain data from all ISSP member countries that participated in the module topic at least twice.
Syntax, scripts, and harmonization tools
Our tools, syntax, and scripts allow you to create harmonized cumulations from existing survey data.
GESIS Mikrozensus-Trendfile
GESIS stellt SPSS-Routinen zur Verfügung, mit denen alle für die Wissenschaft verfügbaren Mikrozensen der Jahre 1962 bis 2016 harmonisiert und kumuliert werden. Das daraus resultierende GESIS Mikrozensus-Trendfile umfasst damit eine Zeitspanne von fünfeinhalb Jahrzehnten. Es beinhaltet knapp 20 Millionen Fälle und mehr als 160 Variablen aus verschiedenen Themenbereichen, und ermöglicht sowohl langfristige als auch tiefgreifende Analysen des sozialen Wandels in (West-) Deutschland.
ONBound: National Identities and Religion
Das ONBound-Projekt (Old and new boundaries: National Identities and Religion) hat durch Harmonisierung, Kumulation und Verlinkung von Umfrage- sowie Kontextdaten eine Datenbasis für die sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung geschaffen, die es ermöglicht, auf verschiedenen Ebenen das Ineinandergreifen nationaler und religiöser Identitäten zu analysieren. Zur Nachnutzung stellt ONBound Syntax Dateien bereit, mit denen sich Nutzende über die Harmonisierung und Verlinkung der Daten zu auswählbaren Ländern, individuelle Datensätze in SPSS oder STATA Format erstellen können.
HaSpaD - Harmonisierung von Paarbiographien
Die Harmonisierung von Umfrageprogrammen, und insbesondere von Biographiedaten, ist in diesem Umfang in den Sozialwissenschaften bisher wenig verbreitet. Durch die Harmonisierung und Kumulation umfragebasierter Längsschnittdatensätze bietet das HaSpaD-Projekt (Harmonisierung und Synthese von paarbiografischen Daten) die Möglichkeit zur umfassenden Analyse von Partnerschaftsbiografien.
