The Finnish Research Infrastructure Committee at the Research Council of Finland has awarded approximately 1.4 million euros in funding to the SHARE-FI research project coordinated by the University of Eastern Finland. The project will coordinate the collection of data in Finland for the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe research infrastructure, SHARE. Another goal of the project is to facilitate access to SHARE data.
SHARE is a survey on ageing conducted in almost 30 countries. It generates longitudinal data for use in various scientific disciplines on the life course, health, economic situation and social relations of people aged 50 and over. SHARE constitutes part of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium, ERIC, and data for it have been collected since 2004. It is the only genuinely comparable set of data for doing comparative research on the living conditions of older people and their family members in different European countries.
The population in Finland is one of Europe’s oldest. Population ageing creates health, economic and social effects that emerge over time. To understand and monitor these effects, longitudinal data on the living conditions of the ageing population, and applicable methods for analysing the temporal change, are required.
The unique panel survey design of SHARE allows the exploration of these effects over a time span of several years, and simultaneously in several European countries. This translates not only into more in-depth analysis, but also into a more robust knowledge base for decision-making.
“Policy recommendations addressing the aging population, for example, are more robust when they rely on research-based knowledge that enables the analysis of causal relationships,” says Terhi Auvinen, who uses the data in her doctoral dissertation.
In SHARE, sampling and fieldwork are closely coordinated among the participating countries, and data collection and analysis methods are continuously being developed with researchers. The data now include 530,000 interviews of individuals from 28 countries in Europe and Israel. Finland joined SHARE in 2016. So far, waves 7, 8 and 9 of SHARE data have been collected in Finland, and the planning of wave 10 data collection is under way. For researchers, access to SHARE data is free of charge.
The project is led by Professor Ismo Linnosmaa of the Department of Health and Social Management. The coordination group also includes Senior Lecturer Antti Kouvo of the Department of Social Sciences, Staff Scientist Tomi Oinas of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, and Doctoral Researcher Terhi Auvinen of the Department of Health and Social Management. The consortium is coordinated by the University of Eastern Finland, with the University of Turku and Tampere University, and the Family Federation of Finland as members. The project also has a wide network of partners, ranging from research groups to sectoral research institutes, that utilise high-quality data on ageing.
