39         Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)

Designed to collect data about Europeans aged 50 and older in order to shed light on population ageing, the fieldwork of the first wave was completed in September 2004 and main results are due to be published in early 2005.  The first wave will be made available in early 2005 (subject to national data protection laws). Funds are being sought for additional waves.  Eleven countries ranging from Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark), Western and Central Europe (France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria) to the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy, Greece) are currently participating.

SHARE uses a single centrally programmed survey instrument that uses an underlying language database to create country and language specific instruments. Data collected include health variables (e.g. self-reported health, physical functioning, cognitive functioning, health behaviour, use of health care facilities), psychological variables (e.g. mental health, well-being, life satisfaction, control beliefs), economic variables (e.g. current work activity, job characteristics, job flexibility, opportunities to work past retirement age, employment history, pension rights, sources and composition of current income, wealth and consumption, housing, education), social support variables (e.g. assistance within families, transfers of income and assets, social networks, volunteer activities, time use).

All data are collected by face-to-face, computer-aided personal interviews (CAPI), supplemented by a self-completion paper and pencil questionnaire. The generic survey instrument is written in English as a computer program in the Blaise language. The full-length questionnaire is downloadable from the web page. In each country or region, the English text is replaced with text in its own language. All texts are stored in a data base that can be accessed online for translation and editing. Since these texts are filed into the Blaise CAPI-program, the structure of the survey instrument is not affected by the language; all survey instruments are identical. This innovation is one of the mechanisms to ascertain cross-national comparability. Another such mechanism is control translation, managed by ZUMA.

Coordinator is Axel H. Börsch-Supan , Department of Economics, University of Mannheim

http://www.share-project.org/