WLS Codebooks

Note: Codebooks contain frequency data from the private data release. For some variables, these differ from the frequencies in the public release. Variables that differ between the public and private versions include "(not available on public release)" as part of the variable description, or a note indicating the difference between the public and private versions.

Phone: Marriage

The variables for complete marital histories are primarily constructed
using variables from both 1977 and 1994 data.  Please read the sources of
variables carefully!

If you want to use variables for number of children from current (1994)
marriage, these variables were created in one of two ways.

     If the respondents remained in their 1977 marriage and they were
     1977 respondents, we used the new information obtained in 1994 to
     update the previous children's roster obtained in the 1977 survey,
     by adding the number of biological and adopted children who were 
     born between the marriage start and end dates.
     
     For all other 1994 respondents who answered the phone interview 
     (i.e., 1977 non-respondents and those not currently in the same 
     marriage at that reported in 1977), the data on number of children
     was obtained solely in the 1994 survey.  PLEASE NOTE that often 
     the answer to the question "How many biological or adopted children
     did you have in this marriage?" does NOT match the numbers and 
     birthdays of children collected in the child roster.

     For 1977 non-respondents who answered the MAIL SURVEY only,
     the number of children could only be ascertained for the 
     current/last marriage.  This was done by selecting the biological 
     and adopted children who were born between the marriage start and 
     end dates.



sc001re-sc004ree:  All 1994 respondents (N=5365)

sc005ref-sc040rec: All respondents currently married in 1994. (N=4263)

sc041rec-sc048rec: Complete history - First marriage
sc049red-sc054red: Complete history - Second marriage
sc055red-sc060red: Complete history - Third marriage
sc061red-sc066ref: Complete history - Fourth marriage

sc041red-sc066ref: Complete marital history through the 1994 follow-up survey
                   using data from 1977 and 1994 sources.

sc067ree-rc072reg: Most recent marriage as of 1994.


Please read related appendices.

NOTE:   This module includes the 661 siblings who responded to the mail only 
        questionnaire; in addition to the respondents of the 1993-94 sibling 
        phone survey.  Variable names from the mail only survey are
        proceeded by an "&" in the parenthesized list of variable
        names included with the variable description. 

NOTE:   See APPENDIX C for Marriage Coding.

NOTE:   See APPENDIX O - COR607, Century Months.

NOTE:   See APPENDIX E for Occupation Coding and Variable Creation.

A complete marriage roster that harmonizes data from all waves has been created
and is available for download.  To read more about the cross-wave harmonized
marriage roster

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