How to Survey Education for Cross-National Comparisons: The Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik/Warner- Matrix of Education

Abstract

Social surveys collect information on socio-demogra phic characteristics of respondents eligible for the interview. Among ot hers, the highest attained level of education is one of the variables explaining the respondent’s social and political comportment, the interviewee’s human values and orientations, the transition from school to work, the position in the labor force and its segments, the social and ec onomic behavior of the individual actor and structural inequalities in mod ern societies. Manifold strategies to operationalize the qualification and education variables during interviews can be observed in social surveys. They differ in the underlying latent concept captured, the ranking and classifyin g of levels into categories and clusters, the degree of classification and meas urement details and finally the capabilities of comparison across time and across nations and cultures. The measurement of education for comparative resear ch across countries is a complex task. The national systems of educatio n and schooling are differently organized across the nations. Altogethe r four different types of school and training systems can be identified in Eu rope. In this paper we will sort the national certificates from general an d vocational schools into one matrix, the newly developed Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik/Warner-matrix of education. This matrix allows us to compare the hig hest level of education a person has reached, as a combination of general and vocational education and useable for a person to obtain a starting posit ion on the labor market. This article discusses those measurement instrument s normally used in international comparative surveys and introduces th e HoffmeyerZlotnik/Warner-matrix of education, contrasting thi s matrix with the other established measurement instruments. To demonstrate the validity of our matrix, we show the advantages of our matrix exempl ified in one case from nations out of the four types of different educatio nal systems: Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, and France.