Partnerships, children, intergenerational relationships • 23.06.2023Data set for the first survey wave of the FReDA study published

Researchers can now work with the data from three sub-surveys of the first survey wave of the family demographic study FReDA. The data set contains the information of about 38,000 respondents and allows representative analyses - among other things, on the situation and changes in family life, on fertility, on parenthood, on separations and on divorces.

How are time, money and infrastructure changing for families?

The publication of the datasets is another important milestone for the family demographic panel FReDA in the course of the project:

"After many years of construction and hard work, this huge dataset is now available to researchers free of charge," sums up Prof. Dr. Martin Bujard, Research Director at the BiB. "This means that German demography now has data that is an international lighthouse project and is used worldwide."

The data is particularly interesting because of its panel character, so that measured changes between two survey dates can be researched. This is an invaluable advantage, as BiB Director Prof. Dr. C. Katharina Spieß points out:

"Studying changes in families, especially in times of upheaval, is very exciting for many family researchers. But by no means only for them, because many other disciplines are also interested in how time, money and infrastructure for family change, and thus also their attitudes."

The three partial waves W1A, W1B and W1R, which have now been published, can be requested from the GESIS data centre and are available free of charge for scientific research purposes. They each contain different focal points in terms of content.

Focus on partnership and children

A large part of the questionnaire W1A concerns partnerships as well as possible children of the respondents. Therefore, respondents were asked to provide information about their children, both biological and adopted or stepchildren. The questions about the respondent's partner referred both to the current partnership and to previous partnerships. In addition to the socio-demographic data of the partners, the duration of the partnership and the type of cohabitation were also recorded in this section. The questionnaire thus makes it possible to trace the partnership histories of the respondents.

FReDA also asks about generational relations

Sub-wave W1B, on the other hand, deals with the parents, background and childhood of the respondents. From a retrospective perspective, this part includes questions about the socio-demographics, family history, occupation and employment of the respondents' parents, but also about the generational relationship between the respondents and their parents. In addition, respondents were asked about the number of siblings they had and the circumstances of their childhood, for example where they lived in their childhood or whether they grew up with both parents or only with their father or mother.

Background: What is FReDA?

"FReDA - The Family Demographic Panel" is a representative longitudinal family demographic study with an international and dyadic design, which started at the beginning of 2021 and will be conducted semi-annually. The name FReDA stands for Family Research and Demographic Analysis. As part of the international Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), the German GGS sample (FReDA-GGS) allows comparative analyses between many European countries. Since the 2022 surveys, the pairfam sample, which has existed since 2008, has also been integrated into FReDA and continued to be surveyed as the FReDA-pairfam sample in a joint instrument.