FReDA – The German Family Demography Panel Study – Restricted Use File

The FReDA Restricted Use File (RUF) provides access to sensitive data (country of birth, open data, etc.) and regional data (BIK regions, INSPIRE IDs, etc.) that have been anonymized or removed from the FReDA Scientific Use File (SUF) for data protection reasons. In addition, the FReDA RUF contains cases that were deleted from the SUF due to data quality issues. This applies, for example, to break-offs and multilingual interviews. The RUF is, therefore, subject to stricter data protection guidelines than the SUF. Analyses with the FReDA RUF are only possible in the GESIS Secure Data (SDC) in Mannheim, Cologne, or Colchester (UK). Further information and contact persons of the GESIS SDC can be found on the <a href=https://www.gesis.org/en/services/processing-and-analyzing-data/analysis-of-sensitive-data/secure-data-center-sdc target=_blank>GESIS website </a>.

The study programme “FReDA – The German Family Demography Panel” is a cooperative project of the German Federal Institute for Population Research, GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, and – as representatives of the pairfam consortium – the University of Cologne and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. FReDA is a longitudinal study on family and demography with an international perspective and a dyadic multi-actor design. As part of the international Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), the FReDA-GGS sample allows for international comparative analyses. From wave 2 onwards, the pairfam sample, which was first recruited in 2008, will be integrated into the FReDA panel as the FReDA-pairfam sample and will be followed with a joint FReDA survey.

The first FReDA wave, W1, was conducted in multiple subwaves consisting of the recruitment wave W1R and the two subwaves W1A and W1B. The interviews were conducted in a self-administered web-based (CAWI) or paper-based (PAPI) mode by the infas Institute for Applied Social Sciences. Data for the first FReDA wave were collected from April to June 2021 (W1R), July to September 2021 (W1A), and November 2021 to January 2022 (W1B). Additionally, data on anchor persons’ partners were collected from August to November 2021 (W1Apartner).
FReDA focuses thematically on family life and intimate relationships. The questionnaires for the first wave of FReDA have a modular design and comprise the following main topics:
• Demography
• Health, well-being, and personality
• Work and income
• Family planning and fertility
• Couples’ relationships and partnerships
• Intergenerational relationships
• Attitudes and values
• COVID-19 pandemic

For the recruitment of the FReDA-GGS sample, a probability-based sample of 108,256 anchor persons aged between 18 and 49 years and resident in Germany was drawn from the population registers of German municipalities.
In the recruitment wave W1R, a total of 37,777 respondents participated in the survey. In the two following subwaves W1A and W1B, 22,048 and 20,220 panelists participated again, respectively. Moreover, 7,213 partners of the anchor persons participated in the partner survey of FReDA wave W1.
The FReDA reference paper by Schneider et al. (2021) and the data brief by Hank et al. (2024) provide a comprehensive presentation of the methodological and conceptual foundations of the FReDA study. More information on FReDA can be found on the <a href=https://search.gesis.org/research_data/ZA7777 target=_blank>FReDA study page </a> and on the <a href=https://www.freda-panel.de/FReDA/DE/Startseite.html target=_blank>FReDA website </a>.