Periodic Reporting for period 2 - KINMATRIX (Uncovering the Kinship Matrix: A New Study of Solidarity and Transmission in European Families)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-10-01 al 2023-03-31
This project’s overarching aim is to reorient thinking about two fundamental family processes: solidarity and transmission. How do families mobilize to respond to their members’ needs? How do families transmit advantages and disadvantages within and across generations?
Most of what we know about these questions is restricted to solidarity and transmission in the “nuclear form” of the family – a small segment comprising only the closest degrees of kinship. This focus ignores family members and family ties that are crucial to social cohesion and support as well as social transmission and the reproduction of inequality. The problem is widely recognized, but it has not been solved until now because large-scale multipurpose surveys do not have the capacity to capture relevant family members and family ties beyond the narrow focus on the nuclear form.
The resulting lack of knowledge is important because the family as a unit of social cohesion and support is constitutive to the European Social Model. Conversely, the family as a unit of social transmission is constitutive to understanding patterns of inequality within and across generations. The need for a better coverage is reinforced by longer lives, increasing the exposure to extended kin from older generations, lower fertility increasing the opportunities of (childless) persons to direct their resources to extended kin, and the rise in family complexity increasing the importance of step-kin in family cohesion and transmission.
This project aims to break new ground in terms of theory, data, and analytic scope, resulting in a new sociological and demographic study of European families. Compared to extant research, the project’s core concept – the kinship matrix – offers a much richer view of family members and family ties relevant to solidarity and transmission. At the heart of the project is a new survey that will generate a novel source of comparative data that enlarges our view on the family in order to better understand the scope of and the mechanisms behind solidarity and transmission. The project is comparative, focusing on countries from Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western regions of Europe.
Most of what we know about these questions is restricted to solidarity and transmission in the “nuclear form” of the family – a small segment comprising only the closest degrees of kinship. This focus ignores family members and family ties that are crucial to social cohesion and support as well as social transmission and the reproduction of inequality. The problem is widely recognized, but it has not been solved until now because large-scale multipurpose surveys do not have the capacity to capture relevant family members and family ties beyond the narrow focus on the nuclear form.
The resulting lack of knowledge is important because the family as a unit of social cohesion and support is constitutive to the European Social Model. Conversely, the family as a unit of social transmission is constitutive to understanding patterns of inequality within and across generations. The need for a better coverage is reinforced by longer lives, increasing the exposure to extended kin from older generations, lower fertility increasing the opportunities of (childless) persons to direct their resources to extended kin, and the rise in family complexity increasing the importance of step-kin in family cohesion and transmission.
This project aims to break new ground in terms of theory, data, and analytic scope, resulting in a new sociological and demographic study of European families. Compared to extant research, the project’s core concept – the kinship matrix – offers a much richer view of family members and family ties relevant to solidarity and transmission. At the heart of the project is a new survey that will generate a novel source of comparative data that enlarges our view on the family in order to better understand the scope of and the mechanisms behind solidarity and transmission. The project is comparative, focusing on countries from Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western regions of Europe.
The work that has been performed so far has mainly focused on preparing and implementing the new data collection for the KINMATRIX survey, i.e. the core deliverable of the project that will be released to the scientific community before the end of the funding period. To this end, the team conducted reviews of the research literatures on solidarity, transmission, and survey methodology (specifically, quota sampling, collecting large-scale ego networks, validation). These literature reviews informed the questionnaire development and survey planning that started in January 2021 and are projected to conclude in November 2022.
The most time-intensive and crucial task as per the project's aims was to develop the questionnaire along with a web-based survey instrument called kincollector that allows collecting large-scale data about ego (i.e. respondent-centered) family networks in unprecedented size, scope, and detail while accomodating constraints regarding interview time, respondent knowledge and attention, as well as technical limits of implementation. This work was conducted in constant exchange with a subcontractor providing the samples, programming the kincollector instrument, and revising this instrument in response to the project team's tests, retests, and the associated (revisions of) instructions. Given the novelty of our approach, the team had to develop solutions to several challenges of implementation.
A milestone was reached in September 2022 when a fully functional version of kincollector was successfully pretested with 150 anchor respondents reporting about more than 2000 family members (nuclear, extended, and complex kin) on a wide range of relational and personal characteristic relevant to the study of solidarity and transmission.
The fieldwork stage has now been prepared for the full launch across Europe, the survey tool being translated from English into eight European languages (TRAPD standard) and samples being prepared for anchor as well as multi-actor respondents.The survey will shortly be rolled out to approximately 10,000 anchor respondents.
In addition to these core achievements in planning the KINMATRIX survey, the team prepared and analyzed various sources of secondary data (FamiLinx, pairfam, SOEP, ISSP, ESS, GGP, etc.) to complement and validate the results from the KINMATRIX survey. We have established several benchmarks based on probability samples against which our quota samples with be compared after fieldwork has been completed. Moreover, the team has completed three research papers based on secondary data that are currently under review or revision.
The most time-intensive and crucial task as per the project's aims was to develop the questionnaire along with a web-based survey instrument called kincollector that allows collecting large-scale data about ego (i.e. respondent-centered) family networks in unprecedented size, scope, and detail while accomodating constraints regarding interview time, respondent knowledge and attention, as well as technical limits of implementation. This work was conducted in constant exchange with a subcontractor providing the samples, programming the kincollector instrument, and revising this instrument in response to the project team's tests, retests, and the associated (revisions of) instructions. Given the novelty of our approach, the team had to develop solutions to several challenges of implementation.
A milestone was reached in September 2022 when a fully functional version of kincollector was successfully pretested with 150 anchor respondents reporting about more than 2000 family members (nuclear, extended, and complex kin) on a wide range of relational and personal characteristic relevant to the study of solidarity and transmission.
The fieldwork stage has now been prepared for the full launch across Europe, the survey tool being translated from English into eight European languages (TRAPD standard) and samples being prepared for anchor as well as multi-actor respondents.The survey will shortly be rolled out to approximately 10,000 anchor respondents.
In addition to these core achievements in planning the KINMATRIX survey, the team prepared and analyzed various sources of secondary data (FamiLinx, pairfam, SOEP, ISSP, ESS, GGP, etc.) to complement and validate the results from the KINMATRIX survey. We have established several benchmarks based on probability samples against which our quota samples with be compared after fieldwork has been completed. Moreover, the team has completed three research papers based on secondary data that are currently under review or revision.
The project advances in several ways on the state of the art. The following contributions are most important:
1. Collection, preparation, and release of the KINMATRIX data that are unprecedented in their coverage of kinship ties. Through release to the scientific community, these data are not only relevant to the KINMATRIX project but will build capacity for future research on European families.
2. New answers to basic questions about solidarity and transmission: How do families mobilize to respond to their members’ needs? How do families transmit advantages and disadvantages within and across generations? The project offers a cross-nationally comparative view on these processes, allowing us to obtain new insights from European diversity in terms of kinship structures, the quality of family ties, and contextual factors that may promote or undermine solidarity and transmission. The project also offers theoretical innovation, reframing pertinent models in terms of solidarity and transmission within and across generations, linking solidarity to transmission, and testing these ideas by combining relational data on the quality of kinship ties with attribute data on status and behaviors. This approach carries a potential to build stronger explanatory models of the family.
Specifically, the expected results of our work on solidarity will provide answers to the following questions:
(a) How do structure and geography of kinship promote or inhibit inter-generational and intra-generational solidarity. How does this architecture of the kinship matrix differ across Europe?
(b) How large and dense is the kinship matrix as an individual safety net? How do intimacy and support potential vary by degrees of kinship, between maternal and paternal lines, vertical and horizontal lines. How are these aspects stratified by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status?
(c) What are the preferential principles of kinship organization in different country contexts. How can we explain cross-national variation in the functions and meanings assigned to kinship in terms of demographic, economic, or cultural factors?
The expected results of our work on solidarity will provide answers to the following questions:
(d) How do immediate kin, extended kin, and interactions between these two family contexts influence status transmission and behavioral transmission?
(e) Which family members are (most) relevant? How does their influence vary between maternal and paternal lines, and between vertical and horizontal ties?
(f) How do these aspects differ between countries? How do they vary by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status?
The project progress so far has focused on achieving the contributions listed under (1). The contributions listed under (2) are expected to be achieved until the end of the project.
1. Collection, preparation, and release of the KINMATRIX data that are unprecedented in their coverage of kinship ties. Through release to the scientific community, these data are not only relevant to the KINMATRIX project but will build capacity for future research on European families.
2. New answers to basic questions about solidarity and transmission: How do families mobilize to respond to their members’ needs? How do families transmit advantages and disadvantages within and across generations? The project offers a cross-nationally comparative view on these processes, allowing us to obtain new insights from European diversity in terms of kinship structures, the quality of family ties, and contextual factors that may promote or undermine solidarity and transmission. The project also offers theoretical innovation, reframing pertinent models in terms of solidarity and transmission within and across generations, linking solidarity to transmission, and testing these ideas by combining relational data on the quality of kinship ties with attribute data on status and behaviors. This approach carries a potential to build stronger explanatory models of the family.
Specifically, the expected results of our work on solidarity will provide answers to the following questions:
(a) How do structure and geography of kinship promote or inhibit inter-generational and intra-generational solidarity. How does this architecture of the kinship matrix differ across Europe?
(b) How large and dense is the kinship matrix as an individual safety net? How do intimacy and support potential vary by degrees of kinship, between maternal and paternal lines, vertical and horizontal lines. How are these aspects stratified by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status?
(c) What are the preferential principles of kinship organization in different country contexts. How can we explain cross-national variation in the functions and meanings assigned to kinship in terms of demographic, economic, or cultural factors?
The expected results of our work on solidarity will provide answers to the following questions:
(d) How do immediate kin, extended kin, and interactions between these two family contexts influence status transmission and behavioral transmission?
(e) Which family members are (most) relevant? How does their influence vary between maternal and paternal lines, and between vertical and horizontal ties?
(f) How do these aspects differ between countries? How do they vary by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status?
The project progress so far has focused on achieving the contributions listed under (1). The contributions listed under (2) are expected to be achieved until the end of the project.