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Divorce (DIVQ)
Divorce/DIVQ is the name of an additional questionnaire initiated by the Department of Sociology of the University of Groningen. DIVQ is also known as the Lifelines Family Ties project, a multi-actor family network study in which relational information was collected among 24 divorced and 19 non-divorced families.
In DIVQ, a total of 160 children, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and stepfamily members reported about their current and past family relationships with 524 family members, resulting in a dataset covering almost 900 relationships. These family members also reported on their personal well-being and health, as well on how they experienced the parental divorce.
The DIVQ variables are not available through the Lifelines catalogue. Requests for this data can be made by sending an email to data@lifelines.nl.
Protocol
The data were collected between Autumn 2017 and Spring 2019. Families with divorced parents were selected when at least one child aged 12 years or older (6-16 years at divorce) and at least one parent (divorced 5-10 year ago) were known in Lifelines. Families with non-divorced parents were selected when at least one child aged 12 years or older and both parents (first partners/not married before) were known in Lifelines. Of the 8,897 available parent(s) in the selection sample, 478 families with the most participating family members in Lifelines were invited to participate in the DIVQ. Besides parent(s)’ own participation, they were also asked to become a contact person in the study, facilitating contact between the researcher and the family members in their family network, i.e, the (divorced) parent’s child, siblings, parents, (ex-)partner, (ex-)in-laws and children their stepfamily members. These family members were not always a Lifelines participant. 44 parent(s) agreed to participate and provided the (right) contact details of their family members, i.e., an overall primary response rate of 9%. In the next step, 388 family members were approached and asked for their consent. A personalized family network survey was sent out to 240 agreeing family members to report on the relationships in their family network. For more information, please see the DIVQ questionnaire and codebook.
Response
In divorced families, 100 family members belonging to 24 families filled out the survey. In non-divorced families, 60 family members belonging to 19 families filled out the questionnaire. Approximately 75% of these 160 family members were Lifelines participants. Relational information about 524 family members was collected. 35 of these 43 family networks are multi-actor, meaning that multiple family members reported on the relationships in their family as well as their personal well-being and health. The overall secondary response rate is 42%. When comparing fathers and mothers from DIVQ to the available fathers and mothers in Lifelines’ selection sample, it should be noted that participating parents in DIVQ have slightly fewer children and siblings. Mothers in DIVQ more often have a job than mothers from the selection sample. Non-divorced parents in DIVQ are slightly younger, better educated and live in more urbanized areas than the non-divorced from the selection sample.
Publications using DIVQ data
- de Bel, V. (2023) The ripple effect in family networks. Relational structures and well-being in divorced and non-divorced families. PhD Thesis, University of Groningen
- de Bel, V. (2023) Multi-Functional Ties and Well-Being in Family Networks before and after Parental Divorce. Social Sciences 12(11), 586.
- de Bel, V. & van Duijn, M. (2024). Collecting multi-actor family network data. Research Data Journal, unpublished manuscript.
