Questionnaire Dwelling Unit-Level and Person Pair-Level Sampling ...

almost all cases since only one spouse-spouse pair could have been selected that included that
pair member. If the true multiplicity count exceeded 1, then the multiplicity count was set to 1. 20
Note that other spouse-spouse pairs in the household (one spouse's parents, for example) would
have been of interest in the household counts discussed in subsequent sections.
Table 6.9
Pair
Relationship
Multiplicity Counts for Each Pair Member
Focus
Member Direct Count Indirect Count
Parent-Child Child From child: number of parents From parent: self + spouse/partner
Parent-Child Parent From parent: number of children
in appropriate age range
Sibling-Sibling
Sibling-Sibling
Older
sibling
Younger
sibling
From older sibling: number of
siblings in younger age range
From younger sibling: number of
siblings in older age range
From child: self + number of siblings
in the appropriate age range
From younger sibling: self + number
of siblings in younger age range
From older sibling: self + number of
siblings in older age range
6.3.2 Determining the Final Multiplicity Count
Once the counts were determined for each pair member, it was necessary to resolve
differences between these counts across pair members. In most cases, the direct and indirect
counts agreed, with no bad relationship codes for either pair member, resulting in an easy
determination of the final multiplicity count. An easy determination was usually possible if one
pair member had bad relationship codes or had a count of 0, which meant that the final
multiplicity count came from the pair member with good data. 21 For some cases, both pair
members had bad relationship codes, which meant that the final multiplicity was left to
imputation. Some of the remainder of cases could be reconciled and some could not. In the cases
where reconciliation was possible, many of the disagreements between the pair members were
resolved by going to the screener. The method used to reconcile differing counts depended upon
the domain. In addition to the screener, for the parent-child domains, the FIPE3 variable was
used to help reconcile differences. Detailed rules for reconciling differences between pair
members are provided in Appendix R.
If reconciliation between the counts from the two pair members in the household and the
screener was not possible, upper and lower bounds within which the imputed value had to reside
were determined from the counts for each pair member and the counts for the screener. The
amount of imputation required for the multiplicity counts is shown in Table 6.10 for the 2006
survey year. From this table, it is apparent that the greatest degree of uncertainty came with the
determination of the number of parents in the child-focus parent-child domains. This occurred
20 In rare cases, it was possible for a respondent to have two or more spouses. Determining the appropriate
multiplicity count in these cases required knowledge of which spouse was the focus, which would be arbitrary.
Because having multiple spouses was an extremely rare occurrence, and because of the complexity of determining
the appropriate multiplicity count, these situations were not accounted for.
21 There were some provisions to this rule. If the bad relationship codes were only within the relevant age
ranges, then the count from the good side was used only if the age ranges in the good side matched the screener.
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