Guideline for harmonisation of measures and protocols measures linking to other infrastructure and data bases

Task 41 MS12 aims to harmonise SocioDemographics SD measures linking to other infrastructure and data bases We will highlight the meansmethods through which SD can be captured across studies and countries in a way that will enable comparison across study populations SD include a set of variables that are often captured using categorical measures and relate to the apparently nonproblematic social categories such as gender age ethnicity country education work status household composition profession and income Nevertheless across research communities there is a remarkable inconsistency in how these SDs are being measured which means that linking such data is often not possible without extensive data curation based on existing literature review and exploring approaches of other RIs as SHARE ESS CESDA EUROSTAT etc We will explore the complexity low hanging fruit prioritise measures nature and sources of this diversity eg cultural structural societal factors influencing how SD variables are conceptualised map the measures currently used and propose a more harmonised way of capturing SD TheseSD measures have to be operationalised in a manner that enables the country and purposespecific details while at the same time maintaining a possibility to reduce the data in to categories that are comparable over datasets This task will develop guidelines for harmonised minimum level criteria for measuring sociodemographics in questionnaires M4 validate among peers and select best practice for data set selection M6 and publish to WP4 M8