Cohabitation Histories NEPS data

FDZ-LIfBi NEPS
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1

Hello!

I am working with NEPS data, and I would like to create longitudinal data on full cohabitation histories (month-to-month or spell data) of both past as well as current partners. When I looked at the SC6_spPartnerCohab file, it looks like it only has information for the time people were part of the NEPS study. If I understand it correctly, it doesn’t tell me about their cohabitation histories before joining the study. Also, the SC6_spPartner file is hard to understand when it comes to cohabitation histories because the variable ts31301 is quite ambiguous.

Is there any dataset that shows the entire histories of cohabitation, including before they joined NEPS (retrospective histories)? If there’s no such dataset, could you suggest how I might be able to figure this out from what is available?

Also, if you have any data documentation for the spPartner and spPartnerCohab datasets, could you please share them with me?

Thanks a lot for your help! I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

2

Hello,

the information on past partnerships have been retrospectively surveyed for all respondents. The information on cohab histrories is included in the spPartner file (ts3152y ts3152m ts3131y ts3131m / th32362 th32363).

In wave 13, the instrument was modified in order to collect data on partnerships in which respondents are neither married nor living together as an ongoing spell if the partnership continues. The recent data on cohabiting histories is stored in the spPartnerCohab file and can be merged with the spPartner file via ID_t and partner.

You can find the documentation in the DataManual. The data files section includes a general description (pp 105) and the section on Special Issues documented changes over time (pp 150):
https://www.neps-data.de/Portals/0/NEPS/Datenzentrum/Forschungsdaten/SC6/14-0-0/SC6_14-0-0_DataManual.pdf

Best,
Hans