National module

National Self-Completion Questionnaire (Drop-off)

The SHARE project is fully harmonized with similar studies in the U.S. (HRS), the UK (ELSA), and new initiatives in China, Japan, India, and other countries. As part of the main questionnaire, each country also includes a national self-completion questionnaire, the so-called drop-off, which allows countries to include their own questions. These do not have to be harmonized with other countries and offer a unique opportunity to address locally relevant issues or carry out field experiments that may not be meaningful in other contexts.

Thanks to the support of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic and in cooperation with the Research Institute for Labor and Social Affairs (RILSA), we included the National Drop-off Questionnaire in waves 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. In all of these collections, we provided external researchers with space in the questionnaire for their questions. For beginning and junior researchers, this is a unique opportunity to collect data on their own topic from a representative sample and, in addition, to combine this data with the main SHARE data, including life history data and other special data collections.

In wave 10, instead of the national written questionnaire, we included the neuroSHARE project, which contained speech, smell, and sleep tests, including a written questionnaire.

Invitation to Submit Your Questions for the National Drop-off Questionnaire (in wave 9)

We invite you to participate in the upcoming 9th wave of the SHARE project. The drop-off questionnaire is completed by respondents (or their proxies) after finishing the main CAPI interview. Due to space limitations, questions must be clearly worded, easy to understand (especially considering the age of the respondents), and should not deter participation. Importantly, they must not duplicate questions from the main questionnaire.

Responses must be either numeric or selected from predefined categories—open-ended questions are not allowed. The drop-off will be pretested in autumn 2021 during the main questionnaire pilot. We will analyze responses from the test, remove problematic or non-informative questions, and prepare the final version of the drop-off, which must be approved by the project coordinator.

Data collected from the drop-off will be linked to the main longitudinal SHARE dataset, allowing researchers to relate responses to the respondents’ life histories and other data.

If you are interested in including your own questions in the SHARE drop-off, please contact us at the email addresses below. Before submitting your proposal, we encourage you to review questionnaires from previous waves (note that not all questions were successful) to avoid duplication. You can find these questionnaires—including coverscreen, main interviews, exit interviews, and previous drop-offs—at http://share.cerge-ei.cz.

To formulate your questions appropriately, we recommend registering for access to the SHARE dataset at https://share-eric.eu/, downloading the data free of charge, and exploring what variables which are already available. The website also contains full project documentation, including publications, methodological materials, and detailed codebooks.

We anticipate high interest, and each contributor will likely be allocated space for a small number of questions (i.e. a topic-specific module). Questions from all fields—sociology, psychology and economics are welcome. We particularly encourage contributions that address important issues in the Czech Republic, with potential for use in academic publications, dissertations, teaching, or evidence-based policymaking.

We are especially interested in questions that are comparable with other international studies. In addition to the usual longitudinal focus, the upcoming wave will also examine cognitive abilities and — in several countries including the Czech Republic — use accelerometers to measure participants’ physical activity.

This opportunity, like data access, is provided free of charge as part of the Czech SHARE infrastructure funded by the Czech government and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Please note that questions must not be related to or funded by commercial entities. Violating this rule would not only be unethical, but could also jeopardize the SHARE project as a whole.

While the primary selection criteria are quality and originality, this call is especially intended to support early-career researchers and students who may not otherwise have the opportunity to collect their own data.

Before each new wave, we contact all users and organize a workshop for those interested in submitting questions to the drop-off. If you’re interested, please send us your proposed topic, draft questions, and a short description or justification of your research idea. During the workshop, we will discuss all submissions and refine selected proposals into a working version to be submitted for approval and pilot testing.

If you know of a colleague who might be interested in participating, feel free to forward this call to them. We especially encourage forwarding this opportunity to your students.

We look forward to your participation and future collaboration.

Radim Boháček
SHARE National Coordinator – Czech Republic
CERGE-EI
Politických vězňů 7
Prague 1, 111 21

Phone: +420 775 379 336
Email: radim.bohacek@cerge-ei.cz or radim.bohacek@gmail.com
Project websites: https://share-eric.eu/ and http://share.cerge-ei.cz

You can find questionnaires and codebooks from previous waves here.