The Facilitating the use of Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) Data will support, enhance, and expand the Cross-National Equivalent Files (CNEF). The CNEF is a compendium of panel data from eight countries. It is a cooperative effort of individuals and institutions that, as of 2016, compiles panel survey data from eight countries that include the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), UK British Household Panel Study (BHPS), Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA), Korea Labor and Income Panel (KLIPS), Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Study-Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE), Canadian Survey of Labor and Income Dynamics (SLID), German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), and Swiss Household Panel (SHP). The CNEF harmonizes data common to two or more of the country- based surveys, allows researchers access to both the harmonized and original data, provides all harmonization algorithms, and focuses on some of the most successful nationally representative ongoing longitudinal micro-data sets in the world. Researchers around the world use CNEF data to study social science questions in a cross- country comparative framework. They study questions that are scientifically important and relevant to current policy debates. CNEF value as a rich resource for such studies is likely to grow as people, economies, and governments become ever more inter-connected. The CNEF data are resources the research community uses to produce new knowledge, deeper understanding and better evidence to guide policy-makers as they adapt policies to new social and economic realities. Interest in cross-national comparative research is deep and widespread. A simple GoogleScholar search for the phrases cross-national or cross national yields more than 1,740,000 hits, many of which consist of articles in scholarly publications on a wide range of topics that includes cross-national comparisons of academic organizations, major depression, bipolar disorder, economic growth, earnings, income inequality, political participation, prostate cancer mortality, and patent rights. This project will update CNEF with new data releases and will develop documentation and dissemination tools that will increase the use of the data and make it easier for both the scientific, policy, and general public communities to share in and find out about the results of research using CNEF data.
The proposed data archiving project titled, 'Facilitating the use of Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) Data' will update CNEF data files with newly released country-files, upgrade our documentation and develop a web-based data/user interface with state-of-the-art technology. The CNEF project compiles, makes equivalent, and distributes social science data from household-based panel surveys administered in eight countries.
