This Wave 4 experiment examines priming effects that impact on the respondent’s thoughts about expected total fertility. Fertility intentions can be highly dependent on wider context, such as partnership, age, actual childbearing, economic position and social pressures. Since long-running panel studies often rotate questionnaire content, there is concern that changes in answers over time may reflect the changing context effects to certain measures. That is, observed change in longitudinal data may reflect the priming effects of preceding questions. The experiment was repeated at Wave 5 with the same allocation.
Households within PSUs were randomly allocated to receive expected fertility questions either before or after questions about friendship networks.
The Wave 4 controlling variable is d_ff_fertw4 on record d_hhsamp_ip and is coded:
Group 1 Version A (before friendship questions)
Group 2 Version B (after friendship questions)
The expected fertility questions are “Do you think you will have any (more) children?” And, if the answer is yes, then “How many (more) children do you think you will have?” . The affected variables are d_lchmor_a to d_lchmorn_a, and d_lchmor_b to d_lchmorn_b on record d_indresp_ip.
The Wave 5 controlling variable is e_ff_fertw4 on record e_hhsamp_ip, with affected variables e_lchmor_a to e_lchmorn_a, and e_lchmor_b to e_lchmorn_b on record e_indresp_ip.
Note, this experiment applies only to continuing respondents being administered the CASI self-completion instrument at Waves 4 and 5.
