Glossary

Social demographic research uses specialised terms. In our short FReDA ABC you will find a selection of explanations of terms.

Anchor sample

We refer to the study participants that we regularly survey as ‘anchors’. They are the main actors in the FReDA survey and together these participants form the anchor sample.
The participants are people who live in Germany and were aged between 18 and 49 at the time of the first survey.

As a dyadic multi-actor study, our sample also interviews the (ex-)partners of the anchors, provided they have given their express consent for us to contact their (ex-)partners.

Respondents only drop out of the study once they have passed the age of 55, no longer wish to be interviewed or have died. Additional refresher samples are regularly drawn to replace those who have dropped out of the study due to age or other reasons.

Further information on the FReDA survey design can be found here.

Call for modules

FReDA enables other researchers to have their own questions included in the FReDA context. These newly added questions expand the range of questions in the FReDA sample and can then be linked and analysed together with all other information from the existing questionnaire.

Calls for modules are organised on a regular basis. The FReDA committees select suitable items from the submitted modules or individual questions in a multi-stage process. The first open module was integrated and surveyed in the autumn survey of the second FReDA wave (W2b) in 2022.

Further information on the open modules of FReDA can be found here.

Campus file

The FReDA dataset is made available to researchers in the form of a Scientific Use File (SUF). The prerequisite for using the data is the conclusion of a data utilisation agreement with the project partner GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.

In addition, the project offers a FReDA Campus File, which is intended exclusively for teaching purposes. The Campus File data can be downloaded from GESIS; it is not necessary to sign a data utilisation agreement. The Campus File is intended for use in teaching, the size of this data sample is around 50% smaller than the Scientific Use File, and at the same time the degree of anonymisation of the data is significantly greater. The Campus Use File is not recommended for scientific publications.

Children's wishes

Science has long been interested in the very low fertility rate in Germany. Other studies have already shown that there is a difference between the number of children people want and the number they actually have. The FReDA study asks participants what the ideal number of children is for them personally and what the general ideal number of children is from a societal perspective.

In light of medical advances in reproductive technology, participants are also asked about topics such as contraception, fertility treatments and the like. This allows us to analyse the potential impact of such technologies on childbearing.

Comparability

FReDA participates in the internationally coordinated ‘Generations and Gender Survey (GGS)’. This means that the respective internationally harmonised GGS questionnaires are used for the surveys every three years. The data collected in this way can therefore be compared with data from many other European and non-European countries that also participate in the GGS.

In addition, the sample of the pairfam study will continue to be surveyed by FReDA - many questions from pairfam have been integrated into FReDA. This makes it possible to compare the new FReDA data with the existing pairfam data and to observe developments.

Cooperation

FReDA is a cooperation project involving the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) and GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. Until the end of 2024, the University of Cologne was also a project partner and represented the Relationship and Family Panel (pairfam).

The BiB is responsible for the overall coordination of the project and for the ongoing development of the questionnaires and international cooperation with the consortium of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP). The BiB is also responsible for science communication, press relations and the development and maintenance of the project website.

GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences is responsible for the survey design and methodological support of the FReDA study. It organises the implementation and programming of the questionnaires, the operational execution of the surveys and the subsequent data processing, documentation and provision of the data.

The University of Cologne represented the pairfam panel until the end of 2024 and contributed many years of experience in panel research on partnered living arrangements in Germany to the FReDA project. This knowledge was also incorporated into the development of the FReDA questionnaires. She also coordinated the integration of the pairfam sample into the new research design of the FReDA study.

Data Portal

The freely accessible FReDA Data Portal is a database operated by Colectica. The portal invites you to explore our panel study in more detail and enables initial research on the questions and variables of the FReDA sample. Researchers, but of course anyone else interested in FReDA, can use it to search the web-based questionnaires of the surveys very easily.

Researchers can find questions and variables that are relevant to their specific research and locate them in the web-based FReDA questionnaires and datasets. In this way, interested parties can very quickly gain a complete overview of the question routing. You will also find comprehensive information on valid/invalid cases, frequency distributions and descriptive statistics in the portal and can immediately recognise how different questions and variables of the FReDA sub-waves are related to each other.

Click here to go directly to the FReDA Data Portal.

Dyadic

Since family decisions are usually not made alone, FReDA has a dyadic multi-actor design. This means that we not only interview our anchor sample, but also their partners. This makes it possible to analyse the decision-making process of couples and to understand how two people make decisions for their family and their lives.

(Ex-)partner and (ex-)partner

To enable dyadic analyses, FReDA also tries to interview the partner of the anchor person. To do this, we ask the anchor person for their consent and the relevant contact details. The partner is then invited to take part in an interview. If they agree, they are interviewed using their own questionnaire. This mirrors some of the information provided by the anchors. This makes dyadic analyses possible, for example with regard to shared or different wishes for children or ideas about a fair division of household chores.

If a participant separates from their partner, FReDA will also interview the ex-partner for a further year, provided the anchor person agrees.

Many studies that follow partnerships only interview the current partner. This means that there is not much information about the consequences of a separation for both partners. FReDA will collect this information and also include new partners.

Family

The family is a cornerstone of FReDA - The Family Demographic Panel. The focus is on relationships and family life. Special attention is paid to family planning and forms of cohabitation. Depending on the life situation, parent-child relationships or intergenerational relationships are also addressed.

FReDA

‘FReDA - The Family Demographic Panel’ is a scientific study that looks at relationships and family life in Germany. The name FReDA stands for ‘Family Research and Demographic Analysis’.

The study focusses on women and men in the phase of starting a family, i.e. between the ages of 18 and 49. Randomly selected people in this age group throughout Germany and their partners are regularly surveyed every six months. Each spring and autumn, the study participants fill out a questionnaire and the data is then scientifically analysed. The data is representative, reliable and of high quality, enabling up-to-date analyses of the family and population in Germany.

FReDA looks at people's individual life situations: life as a single person, in a partnership or in a family with children. The study investigates how people in Germany live, how they organise their everyday lives in partnerships and how satisfied they are with their lives. The project promptly reports key findings of political relevance to politicians and the public.

Generations and Gender Programme

FReDA is part of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP). The GGP conducts the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) in around 20 countries and focuses on families and life courses. Every three years, namely in 2021 (1st FReDA wave), 2024 (4th FReDA wave) and 2027 (7th FReDA wave), the respective internationally harmonised GGS questionnaires are used for the surveys of FReDA anchors (FReDA-GGS sample). This means that the FReDA surveys also allow international comparisons with numerous other countries in Europe and beyond. The FReDA-GGS sample makes it possible to compare data for Germany with cultural, institutional and economic background data from other European countries and to carry out analyses of family diversity and the convergence or divergence of family changes in Europe.

Further information on the GGS can be found on the GGP website.

High-quality data

One aim of FReDA is to provide a data infrastructure that enables comprehensive scientific utilisation. The data is made available as ‘Scientific Use Files’ and can be retrieved from the Data Archive for Social Sciences (DAS) at GESIS.

The data is also provided with extensive documentation, such as the questionnaires and reports on data collection. Users should be able to analyse the data thoroughly and identify possible biases.

Household

Our study asks participants about their household. We ask who lives in the household, how housework is distributed and more. We want to develop a better understanding of how households function and how society and politics can support them.

Intergenerational relationships

Depending on the life situation, parent-child relationships or intergenerational relationships are also addressed. In addition, FReDA also researches, for example, life satisfaction, well-being, values, understanding of roles and structural framework conditions of the respondents.

Longitudinal study

In the FReDA study, the same participants are surveyed every year. This allows us to follow them over a longer period of time and observe developments. This also allows us to identify and analyse changes over the course of their lives. The possible reasons for certain decisions or events can be traced, for example whether the number of children the participants have depends on how early they decided to have children.

Newsletter

Our electronic newsletter is published at least twice a year - or whenever there is something unusual to report from the FReDA environment. The newsletter keeps interested people up to date and provides them with regular news and updates on FReDA. This also includes information and dates about upcoming events, workshops and conferences, current calls, new publications with FReDA data and much more.

You can subscribe to the FReDA newsletter here. And if you want to unsubscribe later: it's really easy, quick and uncomplicated. We promise.

Open modules

The FReDA questionnaire programme comprises various question modules. Every three years, we use the internationally harmonised GGS questionnaires for the surveys. In the meantime, however, both pairfam and GGS modules are used, which integrate questions from both surveys.

FReDA also has open modules: External researchers have the opportunity to submit their own questions and thus collect data via FReDA to specifically support their own research.

Further information on the open modules of FReDA can be found here.

On-Site File (OSF)

The FReDA On-Site File (OSF) is an extended version of the FReDA SUF. It contains extensive administrative data, paradata and regional data. In addition, this special data set also includes anonymised answers to open questions. It is only possible to work with this data if a comprehensible legitimate scientific interest in this additional information can be demonstrated. Working with this sensitive data is only possible at a guest workstation at the GESIS Secure Data Centre and a special data usage agreement must be approved in advance.

Pairfam

The relationship and family panel pairfam (‘Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics’) is regarded as the leading multidisciplinary longitudinal study on partnerships and families in Germany. It was a 14-wave multi-actor panel study on partnership and family dynamics in Germany, which was conducted annually between 2008 and 2022. After the scheduled end of funding by the German Research Foundation, the independent pairfam project was discontinued, but the pairfam sample will be continued by FReDA.

Pairfam had collected data from a probability-based anchor sample of the 1991-93, 1981-83 and 1971-73 birth cohorts. In wave 4, this anchor sample was supplemented by a sample of respondents living in eastern Germany, which included participants from the two oldest cohorts. At the beginning of pairfam wave 11, a refreshment sample was recruited with additional anchor respondents from the two youngest cohorts and a new cohort (2001-03). As a multi-actor study, pairfam also interviewed the partners of the anchors and, from wave 2 onwards, their parents or stepparents as well as the children in the household aged 8-15. Upon reaching the age of 15, participants in the pairfam child survey could become step-up anchor respondents.

With the second wave of FReDA, pairfam became part of FReDA. Insofar as it is relevant to the family demographic focus of FReDA, the pairfam questionnaire programme will be continued (in a harmonised form if necessary) and supplements the core questionnaire modules of FReDA. In order to facilitate the merging of data from the FReDA pairfam sample with data from earlier pairfam waves for use as a long-term Panel 6 dataset, the data structure (including respondent identifiers and variables) will also remain similar.

Further information on the continuation of pairfam by FReDA can be found here.

Partner

In sub-wave W1A, FReDA initially asked all anchors who were living in a partnership at the time to consent to being contacted by their partner. If the anchors agreed to this, FReDA then invited these partners to take part in the survey. From sub-wave W2A onwards, the anchors were then asked for their consent for both their current partner and their ex-partner to be contacted and invited to take part in a separate partner survey.

The partners are surveyed at the same six-monthly frequency as the anchors. Although the partner questionnaire differs from the anchor questionnaire, the questions overlap so that data users have the opportunity to look at two perspectives on the same relationship. The data collected from partners is stored in a separate dataset with its own variable naming convention, using a ‘p’ prefix for all variable names. The partner sample is smaller than the anchor sample and does not claim to be representative.

Public relations work

We not only want to share the data and results with other researchers, but also attach great importance to ensuring that people in politics, the media and the public learn more about the situation of families and partnerships in Germany. For this reason, FReDA has a public relations team that manages the project website and social media channels, among other things. This team works to publish easily understandable information about the study and its results.

Here you can find the contact details of FReDA's public relations team.

Release

After the surveys of the two sub-waves of a year, the collected data is processed and subsequently published by the project partner GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. They are then available to researchers free of charge for scientific and non-commercial purposes and can be requested from GESIS after providing appropriate proof.

The last data release took place on 31 May 2024, when the data from the first and second FReDA waves were published. The current dataset therefore contains the recruitment wave W1R as well as the sub-waves W1A, W1B, W2A and W2B. In addition, it provides you with the data from the surveys of the partners or ex-partners of the anchors (W1A partners, W2A partners and W2B partners).

Researchers interested in using the data must sign a data use agreement and verify that they belong to the scientific community. Once the contract has been reviewed, the data will be made available by GESIS as ‘scientific use files’. The data can also be researched and accessed via the GESIS search. If you have any questions about data access, you can also dataservices@gesis.org.

You are also welcome to use the FReDA Data Portal for an initial free search. It provides you with a simple and convenient overview of FReDA data and content.

Recruitment

FReDA carried out a recruitment wave in spring 2021. This means that we invited randomly selected people aged 18 to 49 across Germany to take part in the study and sent out a shorter survey.

We assume that participants will leave the study, either because they have passed the age of 55, because they no longer wish to be surveyed or in the event of death. We will therefore regularly recruit and invite new people to replace those who no longer participate.

Sample

At the centre of FReDA's data collection are people in early to middle adulthood, i.e. in the phase of life in which they typically find a permanent partner, start a family and clarify issues of compatibility. Twice a year, FReDA surveys people who live in Germany and were 18 to 49 years old at the time of the first survey. By surveying the same people regularly and repeatedly, it is possible to document developments and changes in their life course. The two surveys of a year together form a wave. Once a year, FReDA publishes the complete data set of a wave and makes it available to researchers free of charge.

FReDA provides researchers with very comprehensive data material that enables international comparisons and also goes back further than the start of the first surveys under the name FReDA. This is achieved by continuing the samples of the predecessor study pairfam, in which four birth cohorts were regularly surveyed - people born either in 1971-1973, 1981-1983, 1991-1993 or 2001-2003. In addition, the FReDA sample is compatible with the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) every three years. This means that the FReDA data can be linked with data from other countries and international comparative analyses can be carried out.

Another important feature of the FReDA samples is the multi-actor design of the study: we also ask the partner of our anchors to take part in their own survey. This makes dyadic analyses possible.

Scientific Use File (SUF)

The Scientific Use File (SUF) is the standard dataset for scientific FReDA users. Every researcher who is authorised to work with the FReDA dataset receives free access to the FReDA SUF after signing and approving a data use agreement.

The Scientific Use File fulfils all data protection regulations; it only provides researchers with anonymised data that excludes the possibility of identifying respondents. Sensitive data and information, such as the location of respondents (e.g. region or geocoded addresses), are not included in the FReDA SUF.

Social media

FReDA has its own accounts on X (formerly Twitter), Mastodon, Instagram and LinkedIn. On these channels, we regularly post current research results from the project, provide information about FReDA events, current calls, publications and much more. We also try to reach people outside the scientific community, for example representatives from politics and the media. We respond to your questions, comments and messages as quickly as possible from Monday to Friday. In this context, we ask you to treat each other responsibly, respectfully and constructively and to observe our netiquette.

Netiquette
Please refrain from spam, insults, slander, defamation and provocation.
Comments with vulgar, violence-glorifying, discriminatory, racist, sexist, hateful and/or illegal statements or content are undesirable. This also applies to commercial contributions.
Mentions and comments should be factually related to the topic of the contribution or to the topics of the FReDA research project.
We reserve the right to delete posts that violate these guidelines or to exclude the respective users from the discussion in future.

Support from the ministries

FReDA was financed by start-up funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from January 2020 to December 2024. Since January 2025, the study has been stabilised by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Home Affairs (BMI) and has since been funded by the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB).

The project is also supported by the FReDA Council, which includes representatives from various ministries, such as the BMI, BMBF, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Survey modes

There are several ways in which participants can complete a survey. For FReDA, respondents have the option of completing an online questionnaire independently. Alternatively, respondents are offered the option of completing a paper questionnaire, which is sent to them by post and can be returned free of charge.

Resident population

The participants are people aged between 18 and 49 who live in Germany. Although the study is focussed on Germany, FReDA also participates in the internationally coordinated Generations and Gender Survey (GGS). Every three years, in 2021, 2024 and 2027, the respective internationally coordinated GGS questionnaires are used for the surveys of the FReDA GGS sample anchors. This data from Germany can therefore be compared with other European and non-European countries.

Wave / partial wave

FReDA interviews the survey participants twice a year, once in spring and then again in autumn each year. Each of these two surveys is a partial wave and is labelled with the letters A (for the spring survey) and B (for the autumn survey) to make it easier to distinguish between them. The two half-yearly sub-waves of a year then together make up one wave of the FReDA survey. Example: The samples W2A and W2B together make up the second wave of FReDA.

The first wave of FReDA is a small exception in this context, as it also includes the W1R recruitment survey. The purpose of this sample was primarily the recruitment of participants and it contained a short questionnaire specially designed for recruitment purposes. Only then did the actual surveys follow. The first FReDA wave therefore comprises three sub-waves: the recruitment wave W1R as well as the spring survey W1A and the autumn survey W1B. Future recruitment waves to refresh the sample will also consist of three sub-waves.

The sub-waves are thematically very similar across the panel waves (e.g. the contents of W1A and W2A largely overlap). This allows FReDA to conduct longitudinal analyses on an annual basis.

Young people

We survey people who were aged between 18 and 49 at the time of the first survey. When we recruited the participants, more than a third of the data came from people under the age of 30. This shows that young people are not (as is often the case) underrepresented in the FReDA survey.