Life-Style of Older People (Singularization Study)

Life-style of older people.

Topics: 1. personal socialization and relation with the children:
number of siblings; growing up with both parents or single-parent;
school education of parents; agreement of views on religion, politics
and marriage with oldest child; preferred educational goals; attitude
to children (scale).

2. social network: person to confide in; description of persons of
social surroundings; persons with whom one regularly has meals together
and to whom emotional relations exist; distance to and sex of reference
person; frequency of contact; leisure partner; personal need of help in
the last few years and persons in the surroundings willing to help;
external persons providing help in the household and yard; persons whom
the respondent himself helps; persons in need of care in personal
surroundings and personal assistance; demographic description of the
persons of the social network; relation with friends and loneliness
(scale).

3. partner and family biography: description of course of life by
means of a time axis; detailed information on personal children: date
of birth, sex, legal status, socialization situation of one´s children
at 18 years of age and leaving the parental home; detailed information
for every partnership regarding: start of actual partnership, start of
living together in a common residence, marriage date, continued
existence of partner relation, time of termination of the relation.

4. training and employment: training and employment of respondent as
well as of partner; occupation biography; estimated weekly time budget
for housework, shopping and raising children; detailed information on
weekly effort and division of labor in housework.

5. attitudes to marriage and family: the significance and most
important characteristics of a marriage (scale); concept of ideal
family relations (scale); moral obligation of children when their
parents are old and of parents for the education of their children.

6. economic situation and miscellaneous: religiousness;
postmaterialism; frequency of selected leisure activities; residential
status; residential furnishings; monthly rent costs; size of residence;
characterization of infrastructure available in one´s residential area;
preferred use of various means of transport; income and financial
support of children or grandchildren, not living in the household;
monthly over-all burden; occurrence of unusual burdens and problems in
the last few months as well as intensity of the stress perceived from
this; type and extent of perceived restrictions from health complaints;
perceived restrictions from health problems of partner. Demography:
sex; month of birth; year of birth; marital status; age of partner;
number of children; state; administrative district; district code; city
size; size of household and family size; composition of household. Also
encoded was: type and way of contacting respondent.