Generations and Gender Survey Norway Wave 1

Method: Telephone interviews, self-administered postal interviews and use of register data. Technique: Web-assisted (CATI) for the telephone interview and Paper and Pencil (PAPI) for the self-administered postal.

1. Dealing with nonresponse 1.1 Screening: No. 1.2 Refusal conversion: No special methods - usual techniques of refusal avoidance, i.e. specify that personal information will remain confidential, offer to call for changing the time of interview, insistence of the research purpose. 1.3 Incentives: Yes. Among those completing both the telephone interview and sending back the self-administered postal interview, 7 individuals were drawn to win a gift voucher amounting to 10,000 NOK (approximately 1,250 Euro).

2. Tracking of sampled units 2.1 Respondent contact information: No. 2.2 Other contact information: No. 2.3 Cards: No. 2.4 Additional surveys: For a part of the panel sample the GGS is the second round. 7,861 individuals aged 40 years or older in 2002, participated already in 2002/03 in the "Norwegian Live Course Ageing and Generation Study", a quantitative survey, based on computer assisted telephone interviews on topics as ageing, health, work and retirement, familiy relations in the second half of the life and well-being. 2.5 Administrative records: Yes, whole sample is based on administrative records.

1. Interviewers 1.1 Total number of interviewers: 223. 1.2 Number of interviewers in the field: 1-223. 1.3 Network organization: Centralized. 1.4 Working arrangement of interviewers: Part-time. 1.5 Payment of interviewers: Per hour.

2. Interviewer training: 2.1 General interviewing: Yes, general interview techniques, CATI and general knowledge on surveys carried out by Statistics Norway survey department. 2.2 Survey specific: Outline of the purpose of the study, the questionnaire, handling of sensitive questions and contact strategies. 2.3 Length: One day specific training for the interview. All recruited interviewers were experienced and trained interviewers of Statistics Norway survey department. 2.4 Control of performance: No. 2.5 Interviewer survey: No.

3. Contact protocols 3.1 Advance letter: Yes, each individual selected in the sample received an advanced letter introducing the survey and announcing the telephone call of an interviewer and the reason for his/her call, the survey subject, the agencies involved in the survey, the size of the survey. The letter included also information about the use of additional register data to facilitate the data collection and to reduce the interview time. The selected individuals were also invited to take contact if he/she had questions respective to the survey (free telephone number or by e-mail) or data privacy (contact information of the data protection officer). The letter included also a leaflet with information about the survey and two scale cards that could be used during the interview. Some of the information in the letter was adapted to the age of the selected individuals and if they were part of an earlier survey or not. 3.2 Cold contacts: Telephone. 3.3 Scheduling / scattering: Yes. To get the highest response rate, contact attempts were scattered over different days of the week and different parts of the day. 3.4 Contact history: Yes. For each contact attempt the interviewer had to report the date, the time and the outcome grid. 3.5 Min number of contacts: No. 2.6 Max number of contacts: No.

4. Questionnaire localization 4.1 Validation: No. 4.2 Pre-test: Two rounds with in-depth qualitative interviews (in total 19 interviews) using different parts of the questionnaire and different versions of the announcing letter were carried out in June and August 2006. A pilot of the telephone interview was carried out in December 2006 (150 respondents). 4.3 Length of interview: The average duration of interview was 43 minutes, with a large variance according to the composition of the household and the complexity of the family structure and history of the respondent.