easySHARE is a simplified HRS-adapted dataset for student training, and for researchers who have little experience in quantitative analyses of complex survey data. While the main release of SHARE is stored in many different single data files, easySHARE stores information on all respondents and of all currently released data collection waves in one single dataset. Moreover, for the subset of variables covered in easySHARE, the complexity is considerably reduced by: a) transferring information collected only from one person of a couple or in a household to all respective respondents, b) transferring time constant information collected only in the first interview to all later interviews, c) enriching the coding of missing values to provide an easier understanding of the routing and filtering of the interviews and d) adding several ready to analyse variables, such as health indexes, demographic information, or economic measures.
The Release Guide to easySHARE documents the data format and all variables included. It also provides a chapter that gives basic instructions on how to work with the data using the most common statistical software packages (Stata, SPSS and R). Both the easySHARE dataset and the Release Guide are constantly updated according to changes and new waves in the SHARE main release.
