Considerations for survey organisers

Survey organisers considering using the surveycodings education tool in their survey should consider the following points:

• The tool was developed to facilitate harmonisation in cross-cultural surveys. It is thus most useful for migrant surveys and cross-national surveys. Given the integration of the tool in the survey questionnaire, for cross-national surveys it would be efficient only if all countries use the same centrally administered survey platform/software.
• If you are running a migrant survey, for which the tool is most fruitful, please check whether the countries of origin of the migrants in your country are covered in the database. If you only want to cover a small number of specific origin countries, it may be easier to implement qualification lists for these specific countries by hand in the survey software rather than incorporating the CAMCES software/database as a whole.
• The tool measures educational qualifications at a fairly detailed level - more detailed than what is usually measured in surveys. This is possible because the tool does not use a simple long-list question, like most surveys do, but offers two different search interfaces. So if you are interested in measuring education in detail, the tool may be useful for you also if you are running a national (non-migrant) survey.
• The database will also be useful for those needing to post-code educational qualifications into any of the classifications offered by the surveycodings Education Tool. You can do so using either the live database search or the Excel version of the database.
• In which mode(s) are you planning to run the survey? Check our detailed information on different modes here. The education coding tool has been specifically developed for CAPI and CAWI surveys. In CAPI, the device needs to be handed over to the respondent because the education question requires self-administration, especially for migrants. In CATI mode, it would thus only work if the interviewer speaks the language of the country in which the respondent was educated (i.e. it should be ok to use for non-migrants, but then the benefits of using the tool are limited).
• We do not recommend using the tool for proxy measurements, e.g. asking the respondent about the education of their partner, mother or father. The level of detail asked will be too high for most respondents to know.
• Every effort has been made to ensure that the list of qualifications and levels of education is as accurate and complete as possible for each country and language. However, users are advised to carry out checks on the database before use. These checks should be conducted for each country/language version for which the database will be used and involve the input of local survey teams wherever possible.