Conferences

Information regarding a person’s legal marital status and cohabitation makes up an important part of the background characteristics covered in most surveys. However, measuring these concepts is not a straightforward task.

Respondents within and across different countries do not always share the same understanding of the concept legal marital status. While the term itself refers to the de jure status of the relationship, some respondents tend to answer about their de facto relationship to a partner. Furthermore, the fact that different partnership forms are recognised as legal in different countries adds to the complexity of the matter.

The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven multi-country general social survey, fielded biannually since 2002. The ESS has made an effort in trying to measure legal marital status and cohabitation separately, as distinguishing between de jure and de facto marital status is required for the exploration of certain research questions.

The ESS is focusing on the measurement of marital status and cohabitation. From its third round, the question on legal marital status was changed to better reflect the diverse legal frameworks in the participating countries. As a result, the approach was changed from input harmonisation to ex ante output harmonisation. However, preliminary analyses indicate that even with this new instrument, misclassifications occur.

We will give a short overview of problems related to the measurement of legal marital status. Our main focus will be on how questions on marital status work in a Norwegian context. This will be investigated through cognitive interviews. In addition to focusing on the ESS questions, we will also explore alternative measurements of this concept.