Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (pairfam)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Josef Brüderl; Professorin Sonja Drobnic, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Karsten Hank; Professor Dr. Franz Josef Neyer; Professorin Dr. Sabine Walper; Professor Dr. Christof Wolf
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Developmental and Educational Psychology ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2010 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 165713635

The German Family Panel pairfam is a social science infrastructure project aimed at providing the scientific community with a large database for the analysis of individual decision-making processes and long-term developments in the areas of partnership and family dynamics in Germany. The pairfam data specifically enable individual and dyadic longitudinal analyses of topics such as partner choice and development, decision-making processes regarding parenthood, childcare, and parenting arrangements in various family constellations, and intergenerational relationships. The data are collected with annual interviews of anchor respondents and their family members. A scientific use file and comprehensive documentation in both English and German are released within a year of fieldwork completion. Web-based information, individual consultation, provision of courses, workshops, and user conferences guarantee a broad and efficient dissemination and usage of the data. Since the start of the panel in 2008, more than 1,800 researchers from Germany as well as abroad have registered as data users, and almost 300 scholarly works based on the pairfam dataset have been published. This proposal within the DFG long-term program requests the extension of the pairfam project for another two years (waves 13 and 14). These are the last two waves to be financed by the DFG as a long-term project, but we will continue pairfam after wave 14. In 2022, pairfam will be transferred into a new, enhanced data infrastructure called “Family Research and Demographic Analysis” (FReDA) which is financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). These two further waves will amplify the potential analyses in several ways: 1. Two additional waves will provide additional data for the investigation of rare events such as widowhood, divorce, the formation of stepfamilies, etc. 2. Longer data series are needed to capture effects of policy changes as natural experiments. Due to the extension of the observation period, the importance of pairfam as a crucial infrastructure for investigating demographic and social change in Germany will increase further. 3. For analyses of complete age trajectories, overlap of the three birth cohorts (which lay 10 years apart) will be valuable. 4. After a new cohort was drawn in wave 11, further observations of these respondents are necessary to enable longitudinal analyses also with the new cohort. 5. As the continuation of pairfam as part of FReDA is planned, waves 13 and 14 are required to close the gap. Without these two waves, we would not be able to start the new data infrastructure project FReDA.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants