Support #1895
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Parental leave histories
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Description
Hello
I'm hoping to find a way to construct a dataset listing paternity and maternity leave uptake (yes/no) and durations for Understanding Society respondents and would like to ask your advice on the feasibility of this.
From my understanding, there are three places in which maternity or paternity leave might have been reported:
1) w_jbstat could be reported as 'maternity leave' for all respondents
2) w_matlv could be reported (alongside the associated date variables) for respondents in continuous employment since their last interview, who were explicitly asked about their leave-taking
3) w_nxtstelse or w_nextelse(n) could be reported as 'maternity/paternity leave' (alongside associated date variables) for respondents not in continuous employment since their last interview
The w_matlv variable is complete for a higher proportion of new dads in later waves. I have seen that a previous User Support enquiry response mentioned a plan to change the universe for this question from Wave 9, which might explain the increase, but it does not appear from the questionnaire that this happened. (If not, I am wondering whether another possible explanation could be the ageing cohort of panel members, resulting in a higher proportion being in stable employment and this a higher proportion being eligible to be asked the question about leave, which I will look into).
I have also found very few people reporting maternity leave through w_jbstat or w_nextelse(n) if they have not already reported it via w_matlv. My interpretation is that in many cases this would be because they either did not need or were not eligible for leave, and therefore did not take it, but in some cases it could be because they did not consider reporting their leave as a change of employment status, which might particularly be the case if it was for a short period.
My questions for you are:
1) Is my interpretation of the questionnaire logic correct about these three possible ways of reporting leave?
2) Was the eligibility to be asked the w_matlv questions changed between waves?
3) Am I correct in thinking that it is possible that some maternity/paternity leave patterns could be unreported through nxtstelse/nextelse?
4) If I am right about 3), can you give me any advice about how others have managed this? I am considering whether to try to find a way to impute it; whether to narrow my research question to the population of people who were in continuous employment and exclude those who were not asked the w_matlv question; or whether to take the data at face value and carry out my analysis assuming that all leave has been reported (perhaps with a sensitivity test which excludes them).
Thank you very much for your help
Emily
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