Abstract
We created a collectivism index to measure regional differences in China. The index uses eight Census indicators that reflect family living arrangements, marriage stability, innovation, and independence. The Census data offers large, nationally representative data, which ensures high-fidelity measurement and fine-grained geographic resolution from provinces down to prefectures (N = 356). The data also allows researchers to track change over time because the data stretches from 1982 to 2020. This dataset is useful for exploring causes of societal differences, outcomes of collectivism, and cultural shifts in longitudinal data.
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Data availability
All data is available on the Open Science Framework (OSF, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DX9JW).
Code availability
All code is available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DX9JW. The provincial dataset and prefecture dataset are both available as.csv and.sav files (for use in SPSS). The codes to compute the collectivism index and to test the reliability and validity of the index are available as SPSS syntax files (.sps).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Yu Wang and Ruibo Xie for helping collect census data.
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L.W. collected data, drafted the manuscript, analyzed the data, and prepared and archived the datasets and code. T.T. conceived the original study, analyzed the data, and drafted and revised the manuscript. J.Z. visualized the data. A.E. revised the manuscript. A.H. analyzed the data.
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Wei, L., Talhelm, T., Zhu, J. et al. A Collectivism Index for Investigating Cultural Variation in China across Regions and Time. Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06661-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06661-1
