Social Science Statistics Blog

While some Chinese surveys are available in English translation, it is still difficult to fully understand their context. China is a very interesting yet peculiar place. It clearly helps to work with someone who speaks (and reads!) the language, though you might still miss some unexpected information -- and there are many things that can be surprising.

More annoying however is the lack of sharing of information and data. This problem has two associated parts. For the existing data, people seem to struggle with similar problems but don't provide their solutions to others. In the case of the China Health and Nutrition Survey for example, numerous papers have been written on different aspects and the key variables are being cleaned over and over. Apart from the time that goes into that, this can lead to different results.

Another lack of sharing is with regards to existing data or ongoing surveys. There are now a lot of people either who either have or are currently collecting data in China. But it is rather difficult even to find out about existing sources. If you're lucky, you've found an article that uses one. If you're not you might find one only once you put in your funding application.

To really start exploring the exciting opportunities that China may have to offer for research, these problems need to get fixed. I can understand that people don't necessarily want to hand over their data, but it seems that there is too little known about existing surveys, even to researchers who have been working on China for longer. And as for the cleaning of existing data and reporting problems, it just seems like a waste not to share. I wonder if there are similar experiences from other countries?