Marital Instability Over the Life Course
Sample Variables
The majority of questions asked in the survey have been identical from year to year. The major categories of questions asked each year are listed below. The same topics were asked of offspring beginning in 1992, but including many more questions about the nature and quality of parent-child relations.
Major categories of questions asked in the survey:
- Household composition with substantial information on each person
- Marital and cohabitation history for respondent and spouse (first year) and changes in marital status each subsequent year for respondent
- Reproductive history (first year) and births in subsequent years
- Religiosity
- Respondent's race (first year only)
- Current housing (first year) and changes in housing (residential mobility) in subsequent years
- Parents' occupation and educational achievement (first year)
- Parents' marital status and quality
- Respondent's and spouse's occupational history (first year) and changes in occupation in subsequent years
- Individual and family income
- Current financial challenges and changes in financial well-being
- Gender role attitudes
- Social desirability response scale (first year)
- Number of close friends and relatives
- Membership in groups and clubs
- Household division of labor
- Satisfaction with household division of labor
- Influence within the marriage
- Overall happiness
- Evaluation of life accomplishments (1983 on)
- Satisfaction with specific aspects of life (1988 on)
- Marital happiness
- Marital interaction
- Marital conflict
- Marital problems
- Divorce proneness (thinking about divorce, talking with others about divorce, and taking actions to end marriage
- Relationships with children
- Health (general and specific condition) of respondent and spouse
- Diseases (1983 and subsequent years)
- Psychological distress of respondent and spouse
- Langner scale of psychological distress (1983 and subsequent years)
- Estimate of consequences of divorce (1980 only)
- Barriers to divorce (1983 on)
- Attitudes favorable to divorce
- Circumstances accompanying divorce and adjustment to dissolution (1983 on)
- Involvement in community activities and attachment to community (1988 on)
- Retirement circumstances and satisfaction with retired life (1988 on)
- Self esteem (1992 on)
- Age-related physical decline (e.g., eyesight, hearing, etc.) (1983 only)
- Risk taking (1988 only)
- Detailed information on respondent's parents' divorce (1988 only)
- Locus of control (1992 only)
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