COR 74a

October 22, 1971
revised: July, 1999

Revised Memo on Coding of Father's Occupation as Farmer

     Information on father's occupation is available from two
sources:  the 1957 questionnaire, furnished by sons, And Wisconsin
Tax Returns, most of which were for the reporting of 1957 incomes.

     Cross tabulation of the two sets of information on the
one-third follow-up sample for males turned up 118 cases coded as
farmers according to tax data (variable OCFA57), but not coded as
farmers according to the questionnaires (variable OCF57).

     The question of arriving at an appropriate classification of
father's occupation arose in the context of analyzing Social
Security earnings data for their sons. This precluded any
reclassification for individuals because of the scrambled ID
numbers on the Social Security tapes.  Therefore, it was decided
that no change should be made to reconcile those two sources so the
individual researcher could make that decision.

    To date no major substantive differences have been discovered
between computations using the initial questionnaire information
and the additional information from tax data.

     The proper classification of cases inconsistently coded does
not seem to be a simple one to resolve.  Therefore, new codes 
have been set up so that the individual researcher can explore the
implications of a variety of different classifications and/or
choose that one most nearly approximating the objectives of a 
particular project.