The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) in the UK: Investigating demographic changes in the family and advancing online survey methodology

在过去的几十年里，英国的家庭生活发生了迅速的变化。与此同时，经济和政治不确定性增加，影响到就业稳定和社会流动性。2019冠状病毒病大流行给家庭带来了前所未有的压力，限制了经济资源，重组了家庭照顾孩子的方式，并暂时中断了社会生活。年轻人受到的打击尤其严重，面临失业、住房困难和经济不稳定的比例更高。这些情况引发了关于年轻人和中年人如何组建家庭，维持伴侣关系以及如何决定生育的问题。了解社会、人口和生殖行为需要详细、高质量的数据。该项目提议收集具有全国代表性的世代和性别调查的联合王国版本。性别平等研究是世代和性别方案的主要成果之一，该方案是欧洲联盟委员会支持的一个国际研究基础设施。在过去的20年里，GGP收集了欧洲及其他地区25个国家的调查数据（www.ggp-i.org）。GGS从未在英国进行过，因此在许多跨国比较中忽略了英国。GGP发起了新一轮调查，GGS 2020，以了解过去二十年来家庭的变化。已获得资金在10个国家收集数据，8个欧洲国家以及香港，澳大利亚和美国的申请正在等待中。一个联合会委员会开发了该工具，并对数据收集方法进行了微调。在线调查将使用具有全国代表性的抽样框架进行收集。这种数据收集体现了物有所值，因为大部分调查费用将用于奖励，并将返还给英国公众。联合王国GGS将填补关于成年早期和中年（18-59岁）的国际可比信息的空白，这将补充联合王国现有的数据来源。国家统计局的数据没有反映家庭事件的复杂性及其与其他生活领域的相互关系。队列研究在很大程度上忽略了那些出生于20世纪70年代，80年代和90年代的人，他们经历了最激烈的就业和家庭变化。《了解社会》是关于家庭和住户的重要信息来源，但对2010年后青年人行为的估计是有偏差的。目前的调查也低估了单身母亲，分居和混合家庭。因此，英国需要一个全面的数据来源来研究新千年的家庭。GGS 2020问卷旨在测试人口统计学理论，并解决新出现的社会挑战，如生命过程中的不平等;经济不确定性;性别平等和工作与家庭的平衡。该调查可以灵活地实施英国特定的问题，例如对英国脱欧的态度。重要的是，调查将包括有关冠状病毒大流行经历的问题。英国全球监测系统将成为了解人们如何应对病毒沉降以及对行为的长期影响的独特资源。除了数据收集外，该项目还将包括方法和人口统计工作包。方法学工作包将评估数据质量、代表性、激励试验以及基于概率的抽样与配额抽样之间的比较。这些分析将有助于深入了解在线数据收集的准确性，从而改进设计和实施。人口统计工作包将使用伴侣关系和生育率数据来调查英国过去二十年来家庭形成的趋势。该工作包将研究整个新冠肺炎期间的生育意愿，揭示英国是否会经历婴儿潮或萧条。

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.