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.
 
Description This project has completed the first aim of the project: to collect 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 team is now working on the methodological and substantive work packages. Methodological outputs include papers on representativeness; survey length in online surveys; the incentive and QR experiments. One paper on the methodological investigation of how best to collect life history data online is currently a technical report on the GGP website and under review. Using cognitive interviewing, this study recommended best practices for capturing event dates and challenges with collecting data through a recall screen. Preliminary results of the other papers are being presented at survey methodology conferences, and find, for example, that long online surveys are less problematic than typically thought.

Two policy briefs have been published summarizing the first findings from the substantive work project. One study finds that childless adults today are far less confident that they will have children and, compared with previous generations, are more likely to report that they will probably or definitely not have a child. While environmental concerns are associated with intending to remain childless for older millennials (aged 36-41) ,our study suggests this is not the case for Gen Z individuals (aged 18-25). Further analyses are finding that childlessness is strongly associated with economic uncertainty, particular individual employment status, household income, and concerns about their own future economic situation.

The second study focuses on childcare. The policy briefing indicates that nearly 70% of parents of children aged 0-5 years report using some kind of childcare, and that those who do not use any childcare are more likely to be from low-income households and have lower levels of education. On average, respondents reported spending £560 per month on childcare. A quarter of families spend £800 or more per month on childcare. The lowest income households spend an average of 20-30% of their household income on childcare compared to higher income groups, who spend approximately 10%. We are continuing to work on the academic publication arising from this work, focusing on gender differences in who does childcare tasks, and the role of flexible and remote working.
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 will be key for informing 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.

Once the substantive findings are finalised and published, we hope that they will be used for policy decision-making, for example the implementation of new childcare policies, and informing fertility estimates and projections. However, the project is still at too early of a stage to produce substantial impact.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

 
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
 
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 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 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