Second Malaysian Family Life Survey: 1988 Interviews

This collection, the second wave of a panel survey, provides household-level retrospective and current data for Peninsular Malaysian women and their husbands and covers traditional topics of demographic research such as fertility, nuptiality, migration, and mortality as well as social and economic factors affecting family decision-making. The overall purpose of the data collection was to study household behavior in diverse settings during a period of rapid demographic and socioeconomic change. Eight survey instruments were used in this study. The tracking instrument, MFLS-2, was used for all households where an interview was attempted, and recorded information such as disposition of survey and questionnaires, number of eligibles, and respondent identifiers. The MF20 instrument, Household Members, was administered to all Panel sample households that were located. It solicited information on the status of the household members and included items such as location, marital status, education, and birthdate. The MF21 form, Household Roster, was used on all households interviewed in the survey. This form collected demographic information on current and very recent household members. The MF22 form, Female Life History, surveyed the Panel women and their selected daughters and daughters-in-law, and the New Sample women. Information collected by this form included pregnancy history and related events, marital, work, and migration histories, family background, and education. The MF23 form, Male Life History, collected data from husbands of the Panel women, selected sons and sons-in-law, and husbands of New Sample women. Data on marital, work, and migration histories, education, and family background were recorded. The MF24 form, Senior Life History, was administered to selected persons aged 50 or more and contained questions on marriages, children living elsewhere, literacy, work experience, migration history, health, and family background. The MF25 form, Household Economy, collected data on household economy from all households interviewed in this wave. Forms MF26 and MF27 were used to generate community-level data subfiles for this collection. Part 97 (MF26DIST--District-Level Data) contains one record for each of the 78 districts of Peninsular Malaysia. This file provides information (most of which pertains to 1988, but some of which dates back to 1970) on health services (e.g., number of hospitals, health centers, and doctors), family planning services (e.g., number of family planning clinics, contraceptive use), birth, death, and fertility rates, number of primary and secondary schools, ethnic distributions, and industrial and occupational distributions. Part 98 (MF26EB--Community-Level Data) contains one record for each of the 398 Enumeration Blocks selected for MFLS-2 and the 52 Primary Sampling Units used in MFLS-1. This file gives the current status of family planning services, general health services, schools, water and sanitation, housing costs, agriculture, transportation, population, urban/rural status, and government programs. Part 99 (MF27COMM--Community-Level Data) offers data for the same units as Part 98 and contains similar information, along with retrospective data on family planning services, health services, schools, and water treatment. Merged files (Parts 106-112) that contain one record per respondent were created by ICPSR using the variables CASE SPLIT PERSON for MF22, MF23, MF24, and MF25 on the New and Senior samples and the Panel and Children samples.