Missing information on parental occupation

FDZ-LIfBi NEPS
, , , ,
1

I wanted to ask about the missing category -55 for mother’s ( t731403_g4) and father’s (t731453_g4) occupations in SC5.

For mothers, the largest number of missing values are coded . in Stata which seem to be mostly those mothers who never worked (which makes sense that they don’t have an occupation listed in the above variable. But there is also a substantial number of missing values coded -55 (.l after using nepsmiss) = „nicht ermittelbar“, although the mother has worked at the age of 15 according to variable t731401.

For fathers, there is a higher number of missing values in the category -55/.l (nicht ermittelbar), although only a small number of fathers has never worked.

What exactly does it mean when the occupation is said to be „nicht ermittelbar“? What is the reason? Is this to be interpreted as a „don’t know“? And is there a reason for why so many occupations for the fathers are nicht ermittelbar, but not for the mothers?

Thank you for the help and all the best,
Tamara

2

Hi Tamara!

I just took a look at the open ended questions for those cases that are coded -55 in t731403_g4 and t731453_g4. Most of those answers are pretty vague (e.g „Post“, „Angestelter“, „bei OBI“). And besides that, there are a lot of covariants needed to derive those _g-Variables.
If the answer of the open-ended question is vague and information of covariants are missing, the variable will be coded to -55. I’m not an expert concerning coding of occuputions, but that is my educated guess.

I don’t know why fathers have a higher number of -55-values. Maybe some fathers left the family or fathers talk less about their jobs than mothers and therefore knowledge about father’s jobs is too little to give an accurate answer?

Maybe somebody else can offer a more logical answer to this phenomenon?

I hope this was somehow helpfull!

Bye
Dietmar