Database of educational attainment, with explanatory note

Most social surveys collect data on respondents’ educational attainment. Current measurement practice involves a closed question with country-specific response options, which are needed because of the differences between educational systems. However, these are quite difficult to compare across countries. This is a challenge for both migrant and international surveys. Therefore, a measurement tool for educational attainment that was initially developed for German migrant surveys in the CAMCES project (Schneider, Briceno-Rosas, Herzing, et al. 2018; Schneider, Briceno-Rosas, Ortmanns, et al. 2018) was extended in the SERISS-project in work package 8, Task 8.3. In deliverable D8.8, we provide a database of educational qualifications and levels for 100 countries, including the definition of a search tree interface to facilitate the navigation of categories for respondents in computer-assisted surveys. All country-specific categories are linked to 3-digit codes of UNESCO's International Standard Classification of Education 2011 for Educational Attainment (ISCED-A), as well as to the education coding scheme used in the European Social Survey (ESS), "edulvlb". A live search of the database via two different interfaces, a search box (for a limited set of countries) and a search tree (for all countries), is available at the surveycodings website at https://surveycodings.org/articles/codings/levels-of-education. The search box and search tree can be implemented in survey questionnaires and thereby be used for respondents’ self-classification in computer-assisted surveys. The live search feature can also be used for post-coding open answers in already collected data.