1.5.1. An overview of the available micro data sets

Almost every country produces its own household surveys. The International Household Survey Network maintains a web-based Central Data Catalogue that holds the metadata created by these surveys. Although ownership and control of access to datasets remains with each participating depositor, the catalogue enables you to see a short abstract and the questionnaire used in each survey (and sometimes the data).

The World Bank has also created a Microdata Management Toolkit to help national statistical offices organise their census and survey data . Survey producers can feed their data files from standard formats (SAS, SPSS, STATA, or others) into the Toolkit alongside the documentation and related metadata (literal questions, sampling methodology, period and method of data collection, information on producers, description of computed, imputed and recoded variables and so on) . The Toolkit checks that all variables and values are properly labelled and the metadata is in order, and then creates a Nesstar datafile. All original datafiles and the related metadata are stored in one single file coded up to international standards, which makes the archiving, cataloguing and dissemination of datasets considerably easier.

Aside from the international databanks produced by intergovernmental organisations, many smaller organizations produce cross-national survey datasets. These typically are academically-driven surveys that compare opinions, life and individual experiences in several countries; examples include the European Social Survey and the World Values survey. The UK Data Service provides access to these survey datasets alongside the macro-databanks through a series of reciprocal arrangements with the host institution or data archive. In the rest of this section we are going to have a brief look at some of these datasets.