摘要: Background or socio-demographic variables like age, education, or occupation are often referred to as ‘objective variables', reflecting ‘hard facts'. Under this assumption, the measurement of these variables should not pose any difficulties in comparative perspective. Of course, it is true that, for example, age can be measured in years, days, or even seconds. However, we are not ‘young’or ‘old’at the same ‘age’in different societies.It is therefore important to realize that those constructs and measures, even if they seem to reflect ‘natural’or ‘objective’states, are always socially constructed and consequently are linked to institutional structures and context-dependent interpretations. With respect to background variables, theorizing is oftentimes limited, resulting in variables not optimal for testing specific hypotheses. For example, education is frequently included in models as a ‘control variable’without considering its …