Comparative Analyses Using Multi-Source Databases: Insights from SDR. Event May 2023

Comparative Analyses Using Multi-Source Databases: Insights from the Survey Data Recycling (SDR) Project

May 9-12, 2023

The OSU Department of Sociology and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies

Columbus, Ohio, USA

The Conference (May 9, 2023) focuses on comparative survey research and the opportunities and challenges of ex-post survey data harmonization. Presenters include Christof Wolf (University of Mannheim, and President of GESIS, Germany) who will deliver the keynote lecture, Francesco Sarracino (STATEC, Luxemburg), Ranjit Singh (GESIS), Joonghyun Kwak (Oxford University, UK), and members of the SDR Team. The conference schedule will be distributed closer to the event.

About the Workshop

The Workshop (May 10-12, 2023) will feature the SDR database 2.0 (SDR2.0) as a key empirical resource to discuss methodological considerations in analyzing multi-source databases constructed via ex-post harmonization. SDR 2.0 covers 4,402,489 respondents surveyed from 1966-2017 in 156 countries. It contains individual-level measures of socio-demographics, political attitudes and behaviors, social capital, and well-being, constructed via ex-post harmonization of social survey data pooled from 3,329 national surveys stemming from 23 major cross-national survey projects, including the World Values Survey, the European Social Survey, and the International Social Survey Programme, among others. SDR 2.0 also contains source survey quality and harmonization process metadata that we stored as control variables in the database and that are available for analyses.

Each of the workshop’s three days features a combination of lectures and recitation sessions. Lectures, delivered by Dr. Malgorzata Mikucka, Mannheim University, Germany, cover an introduction to multi-level modeling for continuous and dichotomous dependent variables, DVs, and separate lectures on 2-level and 3-level models with continuous and dummy DVs.

Recitation sessions are led by Dr. Michal Kotnarowski, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Using R and the SDR 2.0 data, participants will examine 2- and 3-level multi-level models for different types of dependent variables.