Work and Family Life Study [United States] (ICPSR 26641)

Version Date: Jan 26, 2010

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Principal Investigator(s):
Alan Booth, Pennsylvania State University; David R. Johnson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Paul Amato, Pennsylvania State University; Stacy Rogers, Pennsylvania State University

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR26641.v1

Version V1

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Summary

Formerly titled Marital Instability Over the Life Course (MIOLC -- ICPSR 3812), the Work and Family Life Study (WFLS) is a follow-up to the MIOLC. The MIOLC examined the causes of marital instability throughout the life course, and contains 6 waves of data collected between 1980 and 2000, which were gathered from married respondents who were between the ages of 19 and 55.

The Work and Family Life Study provides data for use in assessing: changes in marital quality between 1980 and 2000; the effects of family-of-origin characteristics and marital history on the physical and psychological health of respondents; and evaluating sample attrition, factors which lead to attrition, and attrition bias.

The WFLS collected new cross-sectional information (Part 2 -- Public Use Cross Section, N = 2,189) on married people 55 years of age and younger, using the same sampling procedures and interview questions that were used in the 1980 wave of the MIOLC. The Work and Family Life Study's Public Use Cross Section is the latest addition to the data collections. This new Public Use Cross Section studies the effects of wives' participation in the labor force on marriage and marital instability.

Also provided in this collection are the Public Use All Waves (Part 1, N = 2,034) and the Public Use Panel Wave 6 (Part 3, N = 1,031). The Public Use All Waves contains information from Waves I through VI, which were collected in 1980, 1983, 1987, 1992-1994, 1997, and 2000. Among the variables included in all six waves are age, sex, educational attainment, marital status and history, attitude toward divorce, number of children, religious affiliation, and income level. The Public Use Panel Wave 6 contains data on persons who only responded to wave 6 of the study.

Unique to this data collection, the Public Use Comparison file (Part 4, N = 11,741) contains information on respondents who would have been between the ages of 19 and 55 in 1980, married, and living with their spouse. These data evaluate potential bias from sample attrition in the panel study. The Comparison Sample is a special purpose sample and does not generalize to a normally defined population of ever married persons.

Citation

Booth, Alan, Johnson, David R., Amato, Paul, and Rogers, Stacy. Work and Family Life Study [United States]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-01-26. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR26641.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Aging (1-RO1-AGO4146)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

1980, 1983, 1988, 1992 -- 1994, 1997, 2000

Date of Collection

1980 (fall), 1983 (fall), 1988 (spring), 1992 (spring), 1994 (spring), 1997 (spring), 2000 (spring)

Data Collection Notes

  1. The Work and Family Life Study is a follow-up to the The Marital Instability Over the Life Course Study (ICPSR 3812).

  2. For confidentiality purposes variables containing area code, ZIP code, and prefix data were removed from the dataset(s). These variables are: AREA80, AREA83, AREA92, AREA97, AREACOD6, OAREACD, ZIPCODE, ZIP6, OZIPCODE, PREFIX, PREFIX2, and PREFIX6.

  3. The variable - VAR7 "What is the name of the county you live in" - is present in the codebook/documentation although it is not available in the data files.

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Sample

National probability sample. The sample was selected using a random-digit dialing cluster technique. Data were weighted to adjust for underrepresentation in metropolitan areas.

Universe

All intact marriages in the continental United States with partners between the ages of 19 and 55 in 1980 and living in households with telephones.

Data Source

telephone interviews and mailback questionnaires

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

2010-01-26

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Booth, Alan, David R. Johnson, Paul Amato, and Stacy Rogers. Work and Family Life Study [United States]. ICPSR26641-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2010-01-26. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR26641.v1

2010-01-26 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Performed consistency checks.
  • Created variable labels and/or value labels.
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Notes

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

NACDA logo

This study is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA), the aging program within ICPSR. NACDA is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Heath (NIH).