Understanding Society User Support

Hi there,

I saw someone else raised this a few years ago as part of a request with several questions, but that part of their query did not appear to be addressed. I am matching cohabiting / married partners using pidp and the provided partner pidp variables. I want to create an indicator of the relationship start date and duration, so I then merged on the partnership history data for each partner. However, for about 20% of couples, their relationship start dates do not match. In some cases, they are just one year apart (say, one says 1985, the other says 1986), which feels fine. There are others, however, with much larger discrepancies - in particular, a bunch have one partner saying the relationship started in 1991 and the other many years prior (e.g. 1957, as in one case). The 1991 feels a bit fishy because that is the start of the BHPS panel, so I am wondering if that was just incorrect and I should use the much earlier date? Especially when the discrepancy is prior to the survey start, it is hard for me to use the observed data to make a judgment call. Do you have any recommendation on what to do in these instances, such as which partner's data we expect to be more accurate (I know, in general, surveys tend to find women's responses more accurate, especially around relationships and fertility) or if there is another way to validate the relationship start date? Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Thank you!