News

Faeser takes over patronage of FReDA

With Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser, FReDA gets a very important and prominent political supporter: "I am pleased to be able to take over the patronage of such a lighthouse project of population research", said Faeser.

One of FReDA's central tasks is to provide policy advice. With the data collected, the current analyses and findings, the project provides an important basis for present-day political decisions. Minister of the Interior Faeser emphasises the immense importance of the project for politics: "The long-term study FReDA will provide us with important, regularly updated information about the reality of families' lives and thereby depicts the regions and the diversity of our society in a differentiated manner. This data will help us with measures to strengthen social cohesion and also to strengthen the labour force potential in times of demographic change. This long-term study is of great value both for science and for political action."

Partner Release

On 31.07.2023 FReDA will publish the data of the partner survey. A total of 7,339 anchor partners in our sample participated in the survey. The field period of the partner survey was from 11.08.2021 to 17.11.2021. The question programme consisted of various question modules that had already been asked in the first and second partial wave of the anchor survey. Thematically, the partner survey focused in particular on the current partnership, division of labour in the household, pregnancy and family planning as well as values and attitudes.

The questionnaire of the partner survey was offered in the CAWI and PAPI modes; 4,856 web-based questionnaires and 2,486 paper-based questionnaires were returned.

The partner survey took place in parallel with the fieldwork at the second survey time. Partners who gave their consent to be contacted and interviewed were invited to take part in the partner survey. By the end of the field, a total of 9,164 addresses had been used in this survey, written to and reminded up to twice. A total of 7,339 interviews were returned, which are currently being prepared for release by FReDA data processing. The unprocessed response corresponds to a gross utilisation of about 80 percent. In only 1.5 percent of the cases could the target persons not be reached because they could not be reached at the address written to or had moved to an unknown address. For only about 18 per cent of the cases was no response received by the end of the fieldwork. Only in very few cases did the target persons actively refuse to participate in the study.

The processed data set of the partner survey will be available to researchers for scientific and non-commercial purposes from 31 July 2023 and will be distributed by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. Access is free of charge.

If you are interested in using the data, you must sign a data use contract and verify that you belong to the scientific community. After verification of the contract, the data will be made available to you as "scientific use files" by GESIS. The data can also be searched and retrieved via the GESIS search. If you have any questions regarding data access, please contact dataservices@gesis.org.

Here we have compiled a short overview with the most important information on the data release of the first FReDA wave for you.

pairfam release 14.0

From 31.07.2023, release 14.0 of the pairfam data will also be available as a Scientific Use File - and with it the fully processed 14th pairfam wave (collected in 2021/22). This last independent pairfam survey wave already marks the transition to FReDA: Most anchor persons were interviewed online for the first time, which corresponds to the main mode in FReDA. In total, the 14th pairfam wave contains data from 5,804 anchors (of whom only 957 were still interviewed by an interviewer) and 1,794 partners (who received a paper questionnaire as in the previous waves). The child and parenting questionnaires were conducted for the last time in this wave - 632 children of the anchor persons took part and 949 parenting questionnaires were completed.

The data can be requested directly from GESIS as of 31 July - they are provided free of charge. For questions, the pairfam User Support is still available support@pairfam.de.

After 14 years, the German Research Foundation has ended its funding of pairfam. But the survey is by no means discontinued: Since 2022, the pairfam sample is part of the FReDA surveys. Thus, extensive panel data will continue to be available for analyses.

Participation in the GGS is growing

FReDA participates in the internationally coordinated surveys of the "Generations and Gender Survey (GGS)". Every three years, in 2021 (1st FReDA wave), 2024 (4th FReDA wave) and 2027 (7th FReDA wave), the respective internationally coordinated GGS questionnaires are used for the surveys of anchor persons. The data collected in this way can thus be compared with many other European and non-European countries.

Particularly pleasing: more and more countries are participating in the GGS or are currently planning their participation. As of today (July 2023), the GGS-II has been conducted in 20 countries or the countries are about to start the field phase.

In detail, these are:
Europe: Austria, Belarus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France (pilot), Germany (= FReDA), Italy, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
South America: Uruguay, Argentina (Buenos Aires)
Asia: Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Taiwan (pilot)

Due to the survey design of FReDA and its compatibility with the GGS, international comparisons and analyses are thus also possible. More information can be found on the GGP website.

Events

European Survey Research Association ESRA
17 - 21 July 2023, University of Milan

GGP User Conference
13 - 15 September 2023 in Warsaw

Annual Conference of the Verein für Socialpolitik (VfS) 2023
24 - 27 September 2023, University of Regensburg

Annual International Conference of the Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies (SLLS)
9 - 11 October 2023, University of Munich