The Comparative Panel File (CPF) harmonises the world’s largest and longest-running household panel surveys from seven countries:
- Australia (HILDA)
- Germany (SOEP)
- Great Britain (BHPS and UKHLS)
- Korea (KLIPS)
- Russia (RLMS)
- Switzerland (SHP)
- United States (PSID)
The project aims to support the social science community in the analysis of comparative life course data. The CPF is not a data product but an open-source code that integrates individual and household panel data from all seven surveys into a harmonised three-level data structure. The open-source character of the code allows for developing and extending areas of application.
CPF version 1.0. covers the period until 2018 and includes in total around 2.7 million observations from almost 360,000 respondents. The oldest survey is PSID which started in 1968 and collected 40 waves until now. The second oldest is SOPE which started in 1984 and collected 35 waves. From 1994, CPF includes four countries, from 1999, five countriese. The youngest panel study in CPF is HILDA with 18 waves since 2001.
CPF is an open-science project aimed at answering the growing need for cross-nationally comparative longitudinal data in the social sciences. It also contributes to the open and replicable science by providing access to data resources and collaborative improvement of research tools.
Currently, CPF is developed by Konrad Turek and Matthijs Kalmijn at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI-KNAW) and Thomas Leopold at the University of Cologne. The CPF code was designed and prepared by Konrad Turek and will be continuously developed and improved by the CPF team and the community of users.
The CPF is available here.