Project

General

Profile

Support #2127

Attrition rate for sub-sample of children

Added by Julia Diniz 23 days ago. Updated 15 days ago.

Status:
Feedback
Priority:
Urgent
Assignee:
Understanding Society User Support Team
Category:
Survey design
Start date:
07/04/2024
% Done:

60%

Description

Good morning,

I am working on a project with the Welsh Government looking at the impact of childcare on children's outcomes, and we have a query on the extent to which the attrition rate for children and parents is different from the attrition for the entire sample, or at least of a broader sample.

We gathered information on children, parents and households using the child, indresp and hhresp datafiles. We sampled children aged 3 who are also observed at ages 5 or 8 and who live with both parents. When tracking cohorts of these children and also when pooling children of these ages across waves (from wave 6) we noticed the sample size reduce significantly (conditional on some light sample restrictions such as no missing values for a handful of variables). Given that within the project we are also exploring the possibility of further research on children and parents using the USoc, I would like to please enquire whether:
1) Attrition rates for parents of children under 10 years old is higher relative to broader samples?
2) The number of children in the study has generally declined across waves?

Any information on this will be much appreciated. Thank you very much.

Best wishes,
Julia

#1

Updated by Understanding Society User Support Team 16 days ago

  • Category set to Survey design
  • Status changed from New to In Progress
  • % Done changed from 0 to 40

Dear Julia,

The answer to you second question is yes, as attrition reduces sample size over time, this also affects the subgroups of children and parents of children. We are still looking for the attrition rates you are interested in. Thank you for your patience.

Best wishes,
UKHLS User Support

#2

Updated by Understanding Society User Support Team 15 days ago

  • Status changed from In Progress to Feedback
  • % Done changed from 40 to 60
  • Private changed from Yes to No

Dear Julia,

I am afraid we do not have specific data on attrition rates you are interested in. Generally speaking, we observe that the number of children each year is decreasing. However, from general literature, families with children, including small children, tend to have consistently higher response and retention in a panel than other groups. But young people without children tend to have higher attrition (partially due to high mobility and never being at home). By this we would expect that if a family started a panel as a family with young children the attrition may be lower for them than other groups. But if a person started a panel as young and single, got married over time and had a child / children, this person was more likely to attrit in earlier waves than other subgroups.

We would also like to recommend our recent paper on the attrition trends in the study: https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/working-papers/2023-16.pdf

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
UKHLS User Support Team

Also available in: Atom PDF