Study Themes

The German Family Panel pairfam is a multiple-topic survey with a strong focus on issues of partnership and the family. However, various questions that relate to other life domains are also included. Most of the instruments are utilized either annually in each survey wave (core modules) or are rotated in every two or every three years (extended modules). A few characteristics are surveyed only once (extra modules). The questionnaires for anchor persons, their partners, parents, and children differ in length and content, but they are broadly similar in terms of their main topics:

  • Partnership: development of partnerships, e.g. meeting a potential partner, establishing and living in intimate partnerships, separation; expectations regarding a partnership; quality and stability of partnerships; etc.

  • Parenthood: decision processes regarding transition to first and consecutive births (timing, spacing, and stopping of births over the life course); desire to have children; number of children; sexuality and contraceptive behavior; etc.
  • Intergenerational Relationships: relationship quality and transmission processes between generations; material and immaterial intergenerational transfers; familial norms and childrens' expectations to their parents; etc.
  • Parenting and Child Development: parenting goals and parental skills; parenting behavior and extent of child caretaking; processes of child development; parent-child relationships within the family system; etc.
  • Social Embeddedness: models of contextual influences on processes of partnership and family development within social network connections and under consideration of external regional factors

Several overviews and the codebooks provide all necessary information about the surveyed topics and variables. 
→ Documentation