The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) in the UK: Investigating demographic changes in the family and advancing online survey methodology
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: Sch of Economic, Social & Political Sci
Abstract
Family life in the UK has been rapidly changing over the past decades. Simultaneously, economic and political uncertainty has increased, impacting employment stability and social mobility. The Covid-19 pandemic has placed an unprecedented strain on families, by limiting economic resources, reorganising how families care for children, and temporarily halting social life. Young adults have been particularly hard hit, with a higher percent facing unemployment, difficulties with housing, and economic precarity. These conditions raise questions about how young and middle-aged adults are forming families, maintaining partnerships, and making decisions about childbearing.
Understanding social, demographic, and reproductive behaviours requires detailed, high quality data. This project proposes to collect the UK version of the nationally representative Generations and Gender Survey (GGS). The GGS is one of the main outputs of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), an international Research Infrastructure supported by the European Commission. Over the past 20 years, the GGP has collected survey data in 25 countries in Europe and beyond (www.ggp-i.org). The GGS has never been conducted in the UK, omitting the UK from many cross-national comparisons.
The GGP has launched a new round of surveys, GGS2020, to understand how families have been changing over the past two decades. Funding has been secured to collect data in 10 countries and applications are pending in 8 European countries, as well as Hong Kong, Australia, and the United States. A Consortium Board has developed the instrument and fine-tuned the data collection methods. The online survey will be collected using a nationally representative sampling framework. This data collection represents value-for-money, as the majority of survey costs go to incentives that will be returned to the British public.
The UK GGS will fill a gap in internationally comparable information about early adulthood and mid-life (ages 18-59), which will complement existing UK data sources. Office for National Statistics data do not capture the complexity of family events and their interrelation with other life domains. The cohort studies largely miss those born throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, who have been experiencing the most intense employment and family changes. Understanding Society is an important resource for information on families and households, but estimates of the behaviours of young adults after 2010 are biased. The current surveys also underrepresent lone mothers, separating, and blended families. Thus, the UK needs a comprehensive source of data to examine families in the new millennium.
The GGS2020 questionnaire was designed to test demographic theory and address emerging social challenges, such as life-course inequalities; economic uncertainty; gender equality and work-family balance. The survey has the flexibility to implement UK-specific questions, for example attitudes towards Brexit. Importantly, the survey will include questions about experiences with the coronavirus pandemic. The UK GGS will be a unique resource for understanding how people are coping with the fall-out from the virus, and the longer-term impact on behaviour.
Besides data collection, the project will include methodological and demographic work packages. The methodological work package will assess data quality, representativeness, an incentive experiment, and a comparison between probability-based and quota sampling. These analyses will provide insights into the accuracy of online data collection, allowing for improvement of design and implementation. The demographic work package will use the partnership and fertility data to investigate trends in family formation over the past two decades in the UK. The work package will study fertility intentions throughout Covid-19, shedding light on whether the UK will experience a baby boom or bust.
Understanding social, demographic, and reproductive behaviours requires detailed, high quality data. This project proposes to collect the UK version of the nationally representative Generations and Gender Survey (GGS). The GGS is one of the main outputs of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), an international Research Infrastructure supported by the European Commission. Over the past 20 years, the GGP has collected survey data in 25 countries in Europe and beyond (www.ggp-i.org). The GGS has never been conducted in the UK, omitting the UK from many cross-national comparisons.
The GGP has launched a new round of surveys, GGS2020, to understand how families have been changing over the past two decades. Funding has been secured to collect data in 10 countries and applications are pending in 8 European countries, as well as Hong Kong, Australia, and the United States. A Consortium Board has developed the instrument and fine-tuned the data collection methods. The online survey will be collected using a nationally representative sampling framework. This data collection represents value-for-money, as the majority of survey costs go to incentives that will be returned to the British public.
The UK GGS will fill a gap in internationally comparable information about early adulthood and mid-life (ages 18-59), which will complement existing UK data sources. Office for National Statistics data do not capture the complexity of family events and their interrelation with other life domains. The cohort studies largely miss those born throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, who have been experiencing the most intense employment and family changes. Understanding Society is an important resource for information on families and households, but estimates of the behaviours of young adults after 2010 are biased. The current surveys also underrepresent lone mothers, separating, and blended families. Thus, the UK needs a comprehensive source of data to examine families in the new millennium.
The GGS2020 questionnaire was designed to test demographic theory and address emerging social challenges, such as life-course inequalities; economic uncertainty; gender equality and work-family balance. The survey has the flexibility to implement UK-specific questions, for example attitudes towards Brexit. Importantly, the survey will include questions about experiences with the coronavirus pandemic. The UK GGS will be a unique resource for understanding how people are coping with the fall-out from the virus, and the longer-term impact on behaviour.
Besides data collection, the project will include methodological and demographic work packages. The methodological work package will assess data quality, representativeness, an incentive experiment, and a comparison between probability-based and quota sampling. These analyses will provide insights into the accuracy of online data collection, allowing for improvement of design and implementation. The demographic work package will use the partnership and fertility data to investigate trends in family formation over the past two decades in the UK. The work package will study fertility intentions throughout Covid-19, shedding light on whether the UK will experience a baby boom or bust.
Publications




Chang G
(2024)
Testing summary tables in the life history questions of the UK Generations and Gender Survey
in Survey Practice


Kuang, B.
(2023)
Who uses childcare in the UK and how much does it cost?
Description | This project has completed the first aim of the project: to collect the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey in the UK. The data has now been processed, cleaned, and deposited at the GGP hub (https://www.ggp-i.org/ggs-round-ii/) and the UK Data Service. The UK GGS has revealed important insights into online surveys, which have contributed to best practices within the field of survey methodology. Using ESRC infrastructure enhancement funds, we collaborated with NatCen to improve the look and feel of the user interface. Innovations included trialling the form of date entry and experimenting with skips and "don't knows". We evaluated a summary table to improve respondents' recall and included an incentive experiment, which found that £20 vouchers were more effective at recruiting participants in deprived areas and with lower education. Using bespoke debriefing questions, we found that the length of survey was not perceived negatively among those who completed it. These important findings are being disseminated to the survey research community through the ESRC-funded Survey Futures Network, co-directed by CoL Maslovskaya. Some of the advancements, such as the date entry and "don't knows," have already been implemented into the international GGS. Our research team has also produced a number of substantive findings, presented at conferences, distributed through policy briefs, written up as working papers, and submitted to journals (GGS website). Key findings include a significant increase in the percent of childless young adults who do not intend to have children compared to millennials' intentions 15 years earlier. These findings reflect concerns in the media and policy discourse that fertility is falling and childlessness is increasing. Further investigations revealed that young peoples' intentions were not associated with concerns about climate change; instead, worries about individual economic conditions and pessimism about future financial situation were most significant. We have contributed to policy debates on the affordability and use of formal childcare, and whether flexible working practices encourage more gender equal patterns of childcare. For example, childcare tasks that interfere with the workday are particularly gendered (i.e. staying home with ill children, getting children dressed, dropping children off at school or childcare). Fathers working from home or having access to flexible hours was associated with a higher likelihood of equally sharing these tasks; the same relationship was not found for mothers. Thus, fathers' use of flexible working may help to address gender inequality in childcare and help women to engage in the labour market. We have also begun to study partnerships formed online. Employing retrospective partnership histories and event history methods, we have found that co-residential couples who met online were more likely to dissolve their relationships within 10 years. The association between meeting online and marriage, however, reversed, with those who partnered online in 2010-2022 less likely to marry than those who partnered online in the early 2000s. These early findings raise questions about how partnerships formed online will develop further, and whether these developments are similar across countries. |
Exploitation Route | The UK GGS is intended to be a public use dataset, for both UK and international researchers. With this data, the UK can easily be put into comparative perspective with other countries which have collected the GGS data. The methodological findings have already informed survey practitioners on how best to conduct fully online surveys. For example, the incentive experiment found that £15 incentives worked best, except in deprived areas, where £20 vouchers are recommended. QR codes do not seem to reduce response rates or data quality, and long surveys are not a hindrance to engaging with the survey. Our substantive findings have already informed ONS fertility estimates and projections. As additional findings are finalised and published, we expect they will be used for policy decision-making, for example by supporting childcare and flexible work policies. |
Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
URL | https://www.cpc.ac.uk/research_programme/generations_and_gender_survey/#Current |
Description | We presented our findings to government policy makers and statisticians, which has led to revisions of official fertility projections. In May 2024, we presented results from the Generations and Gender Survey on fertility intentions, which led the Office of National Statistics to revise their fertility projections downwards. The fertility estimates lead into National Population Projections, which are used as a common framework for social, health, and education policy. |
First Year Of Impact | 2024 |
Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy |
Impact Types | Societal Policy & public services |
Description | Influenced National Population Policy Projections |
Geographic Reach | National |
Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
Impact | According to the ONS website, "The primary purpose of the projections is to provide an estimate of future population that is used as a common framework for planning in a number of different fields. The NPPs are used as a base for other official population projections such as marital status projections, subnational projections, household projections and in the calculation of life tables. Other government departments use the projections directly to calculate information such as future school place requirements, expected future cost of state pensions and potential demand for health services." Fertility estimates are crucial for understanding the future size of the UK population. Knowing that many people of reproductive age do not want to or are uncertain about having children is important for projecting fertility estimates into the future. The ONS team reported to us that they would change their fertility projections to take into account additional uncertainty. |
URL | https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bul... |
Description | Infrastructure Enhancement Grant |
Amount | £168,905 (GBP) |
Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2022 |
End | 03/2022 |
Description | Infrastructure Enhancement for Panel Mainenance |
Amount | £122,214 (GBP) |
Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 11/2023 |
End | 12/2024 |
Title | United Kingdom Generations and Gender Survey, 2022-2023: Special Licence Access |
Description | The UK Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is conducted by the University of Southampton and the survey agency NatCen Social Research. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The GGS is one of the main outputs of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), an international research infrastructure supported by the European Commission. The GGP aims to understand how individuals and families have been changing over the past two decades. A multi-institutional Consortium Board developed the questionnaire, keeping in mind international comparability.The UK GGS is a nationally representative online survey that has collected information from around 7,000 respondents aged 18-59. The sampling design uses a sampling framework based on Postcode Address files (PAF). Weights are available with the data.Further information may be found on the Centre for Population Change Generations and Gender Survey webpage. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2024 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | Users can download the UK GGS as a Special License dataset from the UK Data Archive or from the GGP hub at https://www.ggp-i.org/data-catalog/146/. The UK GGS data has been downloaded approximately 5 times from the UK Data Service and over 80 times from the GGP website. |
URL | https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/doi/?id=9247#1 |
Description | Collaboration with NatCen |
Organisation | National Centre for Social Research |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | We established closer links and created opportunities for joint projects and work |
Collaborator Contribution | NatCen attended advisory board meetings, helped to disseminate the results of our project in their institution. Gerry Nicolaas from NatCen was one of the keynote speakers at the conference organised as part of the project. She also presented at the RSS event organised as part of the project. |
Impact | Advisory board meetings. Keynote speech at our conference. Presentation at our RSS event. Successful ESRC project - ES/V001051/1. Application for another ESRC project. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | Generations and Gender Programme Activities |
Organisation | Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences |
Department | Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute |
Country | Netherlands |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | The UK GGS team works closely with NIDI on several aspects of the Gender and Generations Programme, which is an international, multi-disciplinary consortium, including researchers from Economics, Demography, Sociology, Social Policy, and Statistics. Perelli-Harris is a member of the Consortium Board of the GGP, which guides its intellectual and strategic development. The UK team has been closely involved in questionnaire development. Perelli-Harris led the Module Selection Committee with colleagues from Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic, to choose new questionnaire modules for wave 2 of the survey. She then reviewed the wave 2 questionnaire to ensure comprehension and consistency. Maslovskaya is on the GGS Methods Committee, which develops weights and other guidelines for cross-national comparison and collaborates on methodological development. This Committee is led by NIDI, but includes members from a range of countries and disciplines. Perelli-Harris has also participated in activities to ensure the future of the Generations and Gender Programme. NIDI has received EU infrastructure funding to pursue ERIC status for the GGP. This has required the participation of all country delegates and governmental representatives to draft the formal agreements to apply to an ERIC. Beccy Shipman, ESRC Deputy Director of Data Strategy and Infrastructure, and Perelli-Harris attended the first Board of Governmental Representatives meeting in the Hague in autumn 2023 to support this initiative. |
Collaborator Contribution | As host of the Generations and Gender Programme, NIDI is highly involved in multiple aspects of the data collection, distribution, dissemination, and impact. The GGP Hub, located at NIDI, is responsible for questionnaire development, harmonization, data protection, and storage. We have worked closely throughout the data collection process and to ensure high quality, standardised data for data deposit. The GGP team is also responsible for international advocacy, impact, relationships with stakeholders, and thinking about future funding for the GGS. As mentioned above, they have instituted a Board of Governmental Representatives to pursue EU ERIC status, similar to that of ESS and SHARE . This initiative has required regular meetings to develop the main statutes and provisions. |
Impact | This partnership has produced the UK Generations and Gender Survey, which has now been deposited at the GGP https://www.ggp-i.org/ggs-round-ii/#toc2 and the UK Data Service. This data is publicly available, subject to the standard data protection regulations. The GGS Collaboration is multi-disciplinary, including researchers from across the social sciences, including demography, sociology, statistics, psychology, and economics. |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | GGS user training |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | This workshop provided training on the GGS to around 20 participants of the British Society for Population Studies. The presentations covered general information about the survey and data access, survey methodology findings, and instructions on how to use the data, including the Harmonized Histories. The intention is to increase use of the GGS. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
URL | https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-development/research/british-society-for-population-studies/Asse... |
Description | Invited talk at the Research Colloquium on Survey Methods at the University of Mannheim, Germany |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | I gave an invited talk "The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) in the UK: Lessons learnt from fielding and collecting data for a long and complex online-only survey" to present the lessons learnt from our UK GGS project (methodological workpackage) to survey methodologists in Germany during my research visit to the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences (GESIS). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | Launch of UK GGS |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | The UK GGS launch was a day-long event which included presentations about the international GGS Programme, an overview of the survey design, preliminary findings and methodological innovations. It brought together 30 academics and stakeholders (e.g. NGOs and Office of National Statistics). By advertising and describing the content of the survey, we aimed to increase the number of academic survey users and practitioners. Presenting methodological results helped to inform other survey organisations (e.g. ESS) of best practices, especially regarding online innovations, recruitment, and incentives. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
URL | https://www.cpc.ac.uk/research_programme/generations_and_gender_survey/#Current |
Description | Media engagement |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
Results and Impact | Findings from the Generations and Gender Survey have been reported in the Guardian, the Times, and the Daily Star/Mail, Sky News, Financial Times, Telegraph, the Independent, and on BBC Radio 4. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023,2024,2025 |
Description | Meeting with National Statistician |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Presentation to National Statistician and heads of research at DWP and ONS on childbearing trends and policy responses. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | Office of National Statistics |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | We also introduced the survey and early findings to the Demography Unit at the Office of National Statistics, which influenced the fertility assumptions for the ONS National Population Projections. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | Presentations on the UK GGS at LSE, UCL, and St Andrews |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | We have presented overviews on the UK GGS at invited Seminar series around the UK. These talks to academics and researchers have provided information about survey content and use, cross-national comparisons, methodological advances, and early findings. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023,2024 |
Description | Presentations to stakeholders |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Team members presented findings from the UK GGS to the 20th Anniversary of the European Social Survey; NatCen's Society Watch 2024; UKHLS The Future of Families Policy Conference, and a fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference. All of these events were attended by academics and stakeholders involved in influencing policy. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | Video describing the UK GGS |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | A brief video describes the UK GGS, aimed at users and general practitioners. The video is available on the Centre for Population Change website and Youtube, and was distributed via social media. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XobC2RoXnp0&t=1s |