Newsletter

December 1996 - Number 3

Dear Reader,

As the old saying goes, "Everything happens in threes," and so it is with the Malaysian Family Life Surveys. At RAND, my colleagues and I are planning (and seeking funding for) a Third Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS-3) to be fielded in 1998, 10 years after MFLS-2 and 22 years after MFLS-1. Our plans for MFLS-2 were greatly aided by the shared experiences and suggestions of users of the MFLS-1 data and of other researchers who were excited about the panel and intergenerational aspects of MFLS-2. I would again appreciate hearing suggestions from MFLS users and other interested parties about MFLS-3 subject areas and any additions or changes to questions and topics covered in the first two Malaysian Family Life Surveys.

MFLS-3 will maintain the longitudinal and intergenerational features of MFLS-2--that is, we plan to reinterview MFLS-2 respondents and to interview their adult children--and will include a new sample (of all adults aged 18+) representative of Peninsular Malaysia in 1998. MFLS-3 will thus collect information on as many as three points in time for the same individuals and on as many as three generations of adults from the same family, and will provide the third consecutive cross-sectional database for Peninsular Malaysia. With their current and retrospective information, the three MFLS surveys together will provide researchers with a unique opportunity to examine the effects of family background on socioeconomic behavior and demographic outcomes over almost half a century. Researchers will be able to use the data to study demographic and socioeconomic change over time, over the life course, and across generations. The data will be valuable for studying how families have responded to rapid economic change, such as that which has characterized Malaysia over much of the period covered by the MFLS.

For those of you who have used either or both of the previous Malaysian Family Life Surveys, please let me know which features of the previous surveys have been the most useful to you and how these features have enhanced the research that you were able to undertake. Reviewing which parts of the MFLS have been successfully used in previous research will help us determine which components of the survey to continue unchanged, which to expand, and which to drop. Similarly, intensive analyses of the data sometimes discover problems with the way questions were asked or that important information was not collected that would have greatly aided one's research. We can use such information to redesign elements of the questionnaire.

If you have not already done so, please send us two copies of each of your papers based on the MFLS-1 and/or MFLS-2 data, one of which we will forward to our Malaysian collaborators. These papers will provide valuable information on how the data have been used and the findings of your research and will enable us to update the bibliography on MFLS-based research maintained here at RAND. More information on the availability of this bibliography and how to contribute to it is included in this newsletter.

I look forward to hearing from you. I can be reached by regular mail at RAND (address is on the back of this newsletter), by FAX (310-451-6935), or by e-mail (Julie_DaVanzo@rand.org).

Sincerely,
Julie DaVanzo