Peking University, Aug. 15, 2015:In June 2015, China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) program went through a mid-term progress assessment by the National Natural Science Foundation (NSFC), and received official compliment:
“CHARLS program plays a very important role in our construction of domestic basic data base, improvement of studies concerning economics and the related subjects, and serves international academic communications. Data collected in the program are closely related to social hot spots, and have already made a great influence. So far as CHARLS program is carried out, achievements are received concerning the organization and training of the personnel, data collection, data quality control, etc. Key index of the data quality are among the best in the worldwide, which sets a quality standard for other similar domestic undertakings. The program did a great work in data propaganda and user training. Soon after the launching of the program, there were already tens of thousands of registered users—which can be considered as an amazing achievement.”
China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) program, a large-scale long-term tracking program in the charge of National School of Development (NSD) and Institute of Social Science Survey (ISSS), Peking University, is aimed at establishing a high quality collection of micro-data reflecting family and personal condition of Chinese middle-aged and elderly people who are over 45, which serves the analysis and interdisciplinary research of population aging. CHARLS started its pre-survey in Zhejiang and Gansu early in 2008, and successfully carried out its revisit in 2012. The nationwide baseline survey launched in 2011, which involved a random drawing of 18,000 interviewees from over 10,000 households among 150 counties and 450 villages. The program later conducted two more follow-up visits respectively in 2013 and 2014, and more coming-ups are expected. Its database has already become one of the most important database resource concerning Chinese aging population.
More than 800 students from different universities all over China are volunteering in the program’s revisits during this summer, and they received warm reception from most of the CHARLS families.
Up to this month, the program has already completed over 14,900 questionnaireinterviews, 10,000 physical tests and 9,000 blood sample collections, which covers 8713 households.
Written by: Choisum Kwok
Edited by: Zhang Jiang
Source: PKU News (Chinese)
