The Contextual Database of the Generations and Gender Programme: Concept, Content and Research Examples

Differences in demographic behaviours across countries and sub-national regions have stimulated interest into the relationships between individual characteristics, and the context in which individuals are embedded. Analytical approaches that include contextual factors into statistical analyses of demographic behaviours require well-documented comparative data at the national, as well as the sub-national regional level. The Contextual Database (CDB) of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) has been set up to support such analyses by providing comparative data on demographic and socio-economic contexts, covering up to 60 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania. This paper presents conceptual considerations and an overview over the content and the functionality of the GGP CDB. Research examples of studies applying multi-level models illustrate how data from this database can increase the analytical potentials of demographic analyses. The GGP CDB is a state-of-the-art research tool, offering well-documented comparative contextual data at the national and regional level. Although conceptually linked to the Generations and Gender Survey, the GGP CDB can also be used to analyse data from other surveys and to study macro-developments. It offers a number of advantages. This includes a high number of indicators specifically geared towards demographic analyses, which often provide extensive temporal and geographic coverage. Besides, the dynamic web environment provides high transparency on data sources as it offers metadata for each single entry. It also supports a number of geocoding schemes that are used by GGS and other surveys to denote region and country of residence