Cover page
QUALITY OF LIFE AND MANAGEMENT OF LIVING RESOURCES PROGRAMME (1998-2002)
FINAL REPORT
Contract number: QLK6-CT-2001-00360
Project acronym:SHARE
QoL action line:KEY ACTION 6: THE AGEING POPULATION
AND THEIR DISABILITIES
(state to which key action, generic activity etc the project belongs)
`
Reporting period:1 JANUARY 2002 – 31 DECEMBER 2004
(dd/mm/yy-dd/mm/yy)
SECTION I: PROJECT IDENTIFICATION
Contract number: QLK6-CT-2001-00360(include reference to complementary contracts–e.g. fellowships, INCO)
Title of the project: ASurvey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe
(as in the contract)
Acronym of the project: SHARE
(as in the contract)
Type of contract: RTD-project
(e.g. RTD project, demonstration project, thematic network, concerted action…)
QoL action line: Key action 6.3: Demographic and social policy aspects of population ageing.
(state to which key action, generic activity etc this contract belongs)
Commencement date: 1 January 2002
(DD/MM/YY: normally the first day of the month following the signature by all parties, unless otherwise stated in the contract)
Duration: 36 months
(in months)
Total project costs: 3.085.269
(in euro)
EU contribution: 2.758.630
(in euro)
Project co-ordinator:
- Name (including title): Prof. Axel Börsch-Supan PhD
- Organisation: Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging, Mannheim University
- Postal address: L13, 17 D-68131 Mannheim, Germany
- Telephone: +49 621 181 1861
- Telefax: +49 621 181 2122
- e-mail:
Keywords: Longitudinal survey of ageing
( list up to five keywords that best describe the project)
World wide web address:
(Internet address where regularly updated information on the project can be obtained)
List of participants:
(provide same details as for the co-ordinator)
(2) Prof. Martin Browning
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen
Studiesraede 6, DK-1455 Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel: +45-3-532-3070; Fax: +45-3-532-3064; Email:
(3) Prof. Didier Blanchet
Institut de Recherche et Documentation en Economie de la Santé,IRDES
10 rue Vauvenargues, F-75018 Paris, France
Tel: +33-1-43136368; Fax: +33-1-43136362; Email:
(4) Prof. Antigone Lyberaki
Regional Development Institute, Panteion University
136 Sygrou Avenue, 176 71 GR Athens, Greece
Tel: +30-338-5256; Fax: +30-338-5276; Email:
(5) Prof. Guglielmo Weber
Department of Economics
University of Padua, Via del Santo 33, I-35123 Padova, Italy
Tel: +39-49-8274271; Fax: +39-49-8274221; Email:
(6) Prof. Arthur van Soest
CentER, Tilburg University
Warandelaan 2, PO Box 90153, NL-5037 AB Tilburg, The Netherlands
Tel: +31-13-466-2028; Fax: +31-13-466-3280; Email:
(7) Prof. Manuel Arellano
CEMFI
Casado del Alisal 5, E-28014 Madrid, Spain
Tel: +-34-91-429-0551; Fax: +-34-91-429-1056; Email:
(8) Prof. Anders Klevmarken
Department of Economics, University of Uppsala
Kyrkogaardsgatan 10, S-75120 Uppsala, Sweden
Tel: +46-18-471-2386; Fax: +46-18-471-1478; Email:
(9) Prof. Alberto Holly
Institut d’Economie et Management de la Santé (IEMS), Université de Lausanne
Rue de Bugnon 21, CH-1005 Lausanne, Switzerland
Tel: +41-21-692-3482; Fax: +41-21-692-3365; Email:
SECTION IIa: PROJECT PROGRESS REPORT OF THE LAST PERIOD (1/1/2004-31/12/2004)
Table of contents
1.OVERVIEW OF PROGRESS DURING THE REPORTING PERIOD
2.STATUS OF THE INDIVIDUAL WORK PACKAGES
3.CONTRIBUTION OF THE PARTICIPANTS
4 PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND CO-ORDINATION
5. EXPLOITATION AND DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES
6. ETHICAL ASPECTS AND SAFETY PROVISIONS
1.OVERVIEW OF PROGRESS DURING THE REPORTING PERIOD
-Summarise the main objectives of the project for this reporting period:
The long-term goal is to collect longitudinal data for citizens above 50 in all European countries, and the originally proposed project aimed at several preparatory surveys in nine European countries, ranging from Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) through Central Europe (France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) to the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy and Greece). The participation of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland in the SHARE project was approved by the European Commission in the first amendment to the contract, and subsequently by the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science (OFES). The Swiss team has also received funding from the Swiss Federal University Conference (CUS/SUK) for the participation of members of other universities, which are partners of the Swiss Network Health Economics (NHE). Meanwhile, the University of Linz in Austria and the Universities of Liege and Antwerp in Belgium received national funding to also participate in the project. The main objectives for the third year of the project were:
- Keep together the interdisciplinary team, formed during the first year of the existence of the project. This team consists of first-rate researchers in demography, economics, epidemiology, medicine, psychology, public health, sociology, and statistics.
- Ensure optimal information and communication flows between the various groups of players in the project, the country teams, the working groups, the survey agencies, and the advisers.
- Iteratively develop and administer the pre-test and the main version of the common questionnaires in the various countries while taking into account differences in language, culture and institutions.
- Finalise sample designs that are feasible in different countries, potentially making use of the sampling frames that are already available.
- Investigate response effects and feasibility of interviewing modes in the pre-test and in experiments.
- Further develop the final version of the common questionnaire in English encompassing the various dimensions of pre- and post-retirement life, ranging from health variables, psychological, economic variables to social support variables and test and pilot it in all member countries of the project
- After pre-testing, conduct a cross-national medium-scale survey (to be called the “main test survey”) in nine European countries with a strictly comparable questionnaire. Teams in Belgium and Austria have obtained national funding to join this effort. A team in the United Kingdom will conduct ELSA in parallel to SHARE bringing the likely number of involved countries to twelve.
- Make the data available to researchers and public policy analysts, conditional only on legal and confidentiality restrictions.
- Upon preliminary evaluation of the main test survey results, recommend a survey design and instrument for a ready-to-go pan-European longitudinal SHARE on a full scale.
-Provide an overview of the scientific progress of the project as a whole in the period, highlighting any significant scientific achievements and their potential social and economic impact.
In the third year of the SHARE project, the last phase of its multidimensional design, combining interdisciplinarity, cross-national comparability, and longitudinality, the elements, which form its main innovation was finalised. For the first time, a team from such diverse disciplines collected longitudinal data involving so many countries. SHARE also features many technical innovations designed to maximise cross-national comparability like the common electronic structure of the survey instrument, and the language management utility, to give some examples.
In 2004, the 14 working groups, which were formed at the beginning of the project, were responsible for finalising the modules of the common questionnaire and for the sample design for the pre-test and the main study in the various countries, and the country teams for supervising the translation process, the information flow to and from and control of survey agencies. The total number of researchers involved in either a working group or a country team was about 140. There also existed a core management group, which was the main guiding body of the project. In addition to the co-ordinator, it had six well-known and experienced members (Agar Brugiavini, Arie Kapteyn, Stefania Maggi, Sir Michael Marmot, James Nazroo, and Jean-Marie Robine). Finally, we assembled various ad hoc advisory committees, notably the HRS advisory group (led by Michael Hurd and Robert Willis, the current principal investigators of the US Health and Retirement Survey), the ELSA advisory group (led by Richard Blundell and James Banks, the current principal investigators of the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing), and the Survey Instrument Review Board (Norbert Schwarz, University of Michigan; Jonathan Skinner, Dartmouth College; Beth Soldo, University of Pennsylvania; Clemens Tesch-Römer, DZA, Berlin; John Rust, University of Maryland). Finally, we invited outside observers on all workshops as discussants, among them Nobel laureates Dan McFadden and Daniel Kahneman.
Core of the work plan in the final year was a last iteration between questionnaire development and translation after the pre-test on the one hand, and data collection, a pre-test and after that the main study in all countries on the other.
The iterations after the pre-test were organised along the lines of the countries and the different modules. Country team leaders organised the translations and at the same time they asked the national specialists of the country concerned in the specialised cross-national working groups, to study and comment the national institutional aspects, with the outcome of the results and the debriefings of the pre-test.
The pre-test of SHARE was held in January/February 2004 usinggenuine probability samples(n = 100 primary respondents per country plus their spouses). Aim was to allow predictions to be made of the reliability and validity of the full questionnaire, including more “problematic” respondents than to be expected using a quota sample. In addition, this pre-test also tested the country-specific procedures to achieve a probability sample.
The intensive national trainings for interviewers were attended by at least one member of the coordinating team MEA, also to make certain that sufficient attention would be paid to the importance of totally comparable interviewing styles in all countries.
By the end of February the data were converted and made available to the researchers in the project, debriefings were held, and the outcomes were evaluated in order to adapt the questionnaire. An extensive statistical analysis of the pre-test was performed to assess the reliability and validity of the questions. Using data from the testing interviews, the pilot results and past data, we improved the design of the final questionnaire. In a meeting in Greece (Chania), the data of the first analyses of the pre-test were presented and it was discussed which changes would still be needed for the final questionnaire.
After this meeting errors were corrected and given the relative length of the questionnaire, also proposals for timesaving cuts were discussed and implemented.
At the beginning of April, the corrected version of the questionnaire (version 9) was ready for the translators the Language Management Utility on a password-protected site on the Internet. Also the drop off questionnaire was finalised and translated in all languages. The translations were once againcrosschecked and back translated by ZUMA and this feedback along with the comments of the working groups was input for a new round of fine-tuning of the national versions of the instrument.
At all stages, comments and feedback from the US HRS team and the UK ELSA team proved to be very useful.
Meanwhile, the new material was translated into all project members’ languages. All partners checked the last version for errors and were allowed to update for these errors.
On April 2, the last Train-the-Trainers (TTT 3) took place in Frankfurt. The TTT 3 was done in cooperation with the team of the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, sponsored by the US National Institute on Aging, which normally also is involved in training programmes for the HRS interviewers. Much attention was paid to the techniques for refusal conversion and to the way to involve more representatives of the Oldest Old group. With the support from the SRC, and together with the MEA-team, the documentation for train-the-trainer programme was extended and improved now also containing video examples of how to approach respondents
The second week of April, version 10 of the questionnaire was ready and the main study could start. After extensive training sessions the last stage consisted of a medium-scale surveyof this final questionnaire(n = 1500 primary respondents per country plus their spouses, totalling some 27.000 respondents), beginning on 20 April 2004 and in most countries lasting through September 2004.
An interim data release for testing and checking (“release 0”) was provided in mid November 2004 for confidential use of all SHARE and AMANDA participants. The first public preliminary data release for all scientific users (“release 1”) is planned for April 2005 in the form of scientific use files accessible to all researchers from academics and publicly financed research institutes. A final release (“release 2”) is planned for the winter of 2005/2006, coinciding with the end of the AMANDA project.
The main test survey was an essential step to demonstrate the feasibility and the usefulness of SHARE, in that it permits substantive data analysis addressing the main questions of interest. This “main test survey” delivers a prototype for the planned multi-year panel, and serves as a demonstration object to the European Commission.
During the last months of 2004, a first response and data quality analysis was done, which was discussed in October at a meeting in Switzerland (Lausanne), where it was decided to produce a First Results Book based on the data.
The Midterm Review Meeting of the AMANDA project used the (not yet cleaned) data from “release 0”. The draft for the First Results Book of SHARE was discussed in December at a meeting is Paris.
All researchers including the team leaders have met in plenary workshops three times in 2004 during this process to finalise the questionnaire and to bring together the first results. (Chania, 18-20 March; Lausanne: 14-17 October and Paris 15-17 December)
In addition, three one-day plenary meetings of all country team leaders took place in Frankfurt on 6 February, 2 April and 23 June.
We have disseminated our progress in a multitude of presentations and seminars. Moreover, we have posted publications, papers, and other results, drafts of questionnaires, timelines and deadlines, milestones and deliverables on the Internet site to facilitate information sharing and feedback. We also have facilitated an open structure, which has allowed many external researchers to participate. This has led to a submission to the German Israeli Foundation (GIF) and the US National Institute on Aging (NIA) for an Israeli SHARE, which is now approved, to an Austrian application for national funding for an Austrian SHARE, and a submission to the national Ministry of Social Affairs in Belgium, which both were successfully approved at an earlier stage.
Looking at the schedule lined out in the Technical Appendix, and reproduced below, we have achieved all aims marked by x in the schedule of the 3rd year of the project on time. We have also fulfilled all milestones for these three years (months 25, 32, and 37) and all deliverables (D1 up to D11) that were scheduled for the three years.
The data dissemination system is ready. Data have been pre-cleaned, weighted and anonymised. Preliminary response analysis has taken place and a report on the design of SHARE as a whole was written. All these efforts have been published in articles, which appear in a “First Results Book of SHARE”. (See section publications)
An important problem, which we continuously encountered in the course of the project, as that given the system of partial advancement by the European Commission, we were not able to pay the survey agencies in time for the services that they rendered.
The coordinating universities sometimes have had to advance important amounts of money in order to pay the survey agencies for their services. We were able to solve this partly, because the universities decided to help out.
-Provide an update of tables 1 (deliverables), 2 (work packages) and 3 (milestones) from the technical annex of your contract, comparing the progress achieved against the planning. Add comments, if appropriate, indicating significant difficulties or delays encountered, the activities thus affected and actions taken to remedy them. In 2004 all projected deadlines for deliverables were met.
Update table 1: List of deliverables (in bold the deliverables of 2004)
Deliverable No / Deliverabletitle / Delivery
date[1] / Nature[2] / Dissemination
level[3]
D1 / Questionnaire module on demographic and economic status / 8, 30 / R / PU, PU
D2 / Questionnaire module on physical/mental health; well-being / 8, 30 / R / PU, PU
D3 / Questionnaire module family/social networks and intergenerational transfers / 8, 30 / R / PU, PU
D4 / Cross-national sample design / 8, 30 / P / PU, PU
D5 / Report on cross-national equivalence / 13, 35 / R / PU, PU
D6 / Fieldwork contracts and report on adherence / 13, 35 / R,O / CO, RE
D7 / Raw data sets from exper., pilots, main test survey / 7,9,14,17, 23,32 / D / CO, CO, RE
D8 / Quality assessment report / 13, 35 / R / RE, PU
D9 / Comparable cross-national data set / 35 / P / RE
D10 / Data base and dissemination system / 35 / P / PU
D11 / Final report on a „Blueprint for SHARE” / 35 / R / PU
D12 / Questionnaire module on health system and health services utilisation / 8, 30 / R / PU, PU
Update table 2: Working packages (in bold the update over 2004)
WP No. / Work package title / Responsible Participant / Person mo’s / Startmo / End
mo / Deliver-able No / Update 2002 / Update2003 / Update 2004
WP 1 / Co-ordination, central manage-ment and quality control / 1: UniMann / 42 / 0 / 35 / 8, 11 / 22.8 / 12 / 34,5
WP 2 / Survey design: Demographic
and economic status / 5: UniPadua / 110 / 1 / 30 / 1 / 44.5 / 38 / 15
WP 3 / Survey design: Physical and mental health, well-being / 3: CREDES / 80 / 1 / 30 / 2 / 41.5 / 20 / 12
WP 4 / Survey design: Family/social network and intergen. transfers / 4: UniPant / 45 / 1 / 30 / 3 / 31 / 8 / 18
WP 5 / Cross-national sample design / 8: UniUpps / 45 / 1 / 30 / 4 / 33 / 7 / 7
WP 6 / Translation and cross-national equivalence / 2: UniCopen / 12 / 14 / 30 / 5 / 0 / 6 / 10
WP 7 / Survey agency selection and fieldwork control / 1: UniMann / 18 / 1 / 35 / 6 / 3 / 8 / 12
WP 8 / Preliminary response analysis / 7: CEMFI / 30 / 3 / 35 / 8 / 3 / 9 / 16,4
WP 9 / Data validation / 6: UniTilb / 30 / 12 / 35 / 9 / 0 / 9 / 4
WP 10 / Data base management / 6: UniTilb / 18 / 9 / 35 / 7, 10 / 1 / 7 / 3
WP 11 / Survey design:Health system and health services utilisation / 9: Unil-Iems / 28 / 1 / 30 / 12 / 4 / 11 / 8,1
TOTAL / 458 / 183.8 / 135 / 140
Update table 3: List of milestones (in bold the milestones of 2004)