KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

The Korean Women's Development Institute has conducted the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families(KLoWF), a nationwide panel survey, in order to investigate women's lives and the structure of families and changes in families since 2006. This longitudinal survey keeps track of changes in women's status in economic activities by life cycle and job experiences as well as changes in family relationships and values, family types, family formation process and events, and family structure.

Beginning with its first wave in 2007 to survey women only, ages between 19 and 64 years old, the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families(KLoWF) comprehensively addresses almost all areas of women's lives with the following distinctive features.

First, the KLoWF collects longitudinal data most suitable for supporting polices on women and families as well as related studies. Second, the KLoWF is a survey that grasps the dynamic aspects of women and families. and The KLoWF aims to build a form of longitudinal data that has historical and periodical quality about changes of individual women and families, focusing on women. Also, the purpose of the survey is to provide rudimentary academic and policy data that can objectively show the actual conditions of women, their families, and changes in the work and daily lives of women who are at the center of rapid changes.

The KLoWF has questionnaires for households, individual women, and jobs to show the overall aspects of women's lives. Considering the features of the panel. The questionnaire for households consists of general features of family composition, housing status, household income, household spending, and assets and debts. The questionnaire for individual women is composed of overall areas of personal experiences and relationships between family members, including the respondent's growing background and general features, marriage and marital life, pregnancy and childbirth experiences, children's education and relationship with children, family-related values, and women's health. The basic structure of the questionnaire for jobs is to confirm whether the respondent has a current job, then to proceed the survey depending on the answer to this question. If the respondent has a current job, she is asked about characteristics of the job, satisfaction with the job, duties other than main duties, discrimination, and maternal protection system depending on her employment status, including that of wage worker, non-wage worker, and special-type worker. If the respondent currently has no job, she is asked about her job-seeking experiences.

Subjects of the fifth wave survey included the original sample households and original eligible household members, ages between 19 and 64, from the first wave survey as well as split-off households and eligible household members of split-off households from the second through the fifth wave surveys. To be the subjects of this survey, eligible household members of the split-off households should live with original eligible household members according to the principles for tracking split-off households. Therefore, the subjects of the fifth wave survey included 12,285 eligible female household members of the 9,592 households surveyed in the fourth wave survey and all split-off households and eligible household members of split-off households established from the fifth wave survey.

Accordingly, the 2015 KLoWF research report includes the following research contents:

First, we completed the fifth wave main survey of 12,285 female eligible household members of a total of 9,592 households, then analyzed the results of the survey.

Second, we made open the data from the 1st to 5th main surveys for experts at home and abroad and held academic symposiums jointly with the two representative surveys of the Korean Women's Development Institute, namely, the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families (KLoWF) and the Korea Women Manager Panel (KWMP).

Third, we conducted a basic analysis based on the results of the fifth wave survey. The basic analysis was made of the overall features of the fifth wave survey contents, and for main questions items, we analyzed the fifth survey in comparison with the 1st –4th wave surveys. Also, we added the results of in-depth analysis of jobs, health, and marital life in order to promote the policy use of the KLoWF data.

Fourth, we performed an interim fieldwork in preparation for the sixth wave survey. In the interim fieldwork, we monitored the panel using various information collected from the fifth wave survey and specified ways to retain the panel based on the results of the monitoring.

Fifth, based on the results of the previous five surveys, we reviewed the questionnaires for the surveys of the coming ten years, presented directions for improving the questionnaires, and introduced research papers that used the KLoWF data.