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Research on the history of family
Analysis of socio-economic structures
Social-anthropological studies on
history
Research on local history
Historical research on the comparison
between regions
Studies on pre-industrial society
Studies on industrialization and on
industrial society
Historical studies on social
development
The central
unit of the database is the household. Cases are created on basis of the group
of information flat (=household), including the elements setid, house, flat and street. The
next level is represented by the various groups of information concerning the
individuals, each named after the position in the household (role).
Every person is described by the elements sex and marital status, age (year
of birth), occupation, birthplace, special role kin and clauses.
The information is not
always complete.
Example of the Viennese
district of Hernals 1880:
read
name=hern1880;
FLAT$HERN1880/1/2
HEADHH$1/836/GASTGEBER%SELB/PFAFFSTAETTEN%NOE/4K
HWIFE$6/849/IM GESCHAEFT%DES GATTEN
TAETIG/WIEN/4K
SON$0/862/SCHULE/WIEN/4K
DAUGHTER$5/863//WIEN/4K
DAUGHTER$5/871//WIEN/4K
SERVANT$5/845/KOECHIN/STERNBERG%MAE/K
SERVANT$5/864/KASSIERIN/PFAFFSTETTEN%NOE/1K
SERVANT$5/827/KUECHENMAGD/SECHSHAUS/K
SERVANT$5/858/STUBENMAGD/SICHELBACH%NOE/K
SERVANT$0/849/KELLNER/FORCHTENAU%UNG/K
SERVANT$0/861/OBERKELLNER/SEIBERSDORF%NOE/K
SERVANT$0/862/HAUSKNECHT/PFAFFSTETTEN%NOE/14K
SERVANT$0/864/KELLNER/PFAFFSTETTEN%NOE/K
FLAT$HERN1880/1/3
HEADHH$1/806/PRIVATBUERGERMEISTER/GUNZENHAUSEN%BAYERN/K//HAUSBESITZER
HWIFE$6/826/HAUSHALT/GROSS-RUSSBACH%NOE/K//HAUSBESITZER
DAUGHTER$5/860/HAUSHALT/WIEN/K
RELATIVE$0/875//WIEN/K/115
SERVANT$5/859/STUBENMAEDCHEN/WIEN/K
With the
creation of the database every individual received an
‘etiquette’, describing his or her position in the
household. This information is already the first interpretation of the source,
as Josef Ehmer wrote in the introduction. If the
first individual of the household is male he was automatically labeled headhh (head of the household), a wife was called hwife (housewife), their children son or daughter,
illegitimate children received the label child.
Furthermore, there were the categories of servants, lodgers and relatives.
The specific criteria for emphasizing these labels can not longer be
reconstructed after the long time since the creation of the database. It seems
to be a problematic classification because, e. g. also relatives could be
servants in a household. Consequently this variable should be used only very
carefully. There are similar problems with ’lodgers’, who could
possibly have worked as servants. One should also be careful with apprentices
and journeymen who, as a rule, were also put into the group of the servants.
This
element describes the sex and the marital status of the individuals. Today it
would not be necessary to put different information into one element, but these
data were recorded on the computer (or on cards) in the end of the 1970's and
at that time it was very important to save disk space. In the SPSS version sex
and marital status are independent variables. This information was
already coded at the data input. With a category arrangement we
translated this element to alphanumeric codes again. The numbers 0 - 4 are
reserved for males, 5 - 9 are females. One exception is the sample of
For most of
the individuals of the database there is information on the age or the year of
birth. The year of birth is either a three or a four digit number. If you find
a person with the age of 0, than this is not a missing value but a child before
the first birthday. There is neither a classification according to age groups
nor a conversion of the year of birth into the age of the individuals within
the database.
In the
element occ the occupation of every individual
was entered following the original wording of the source. Depending on the year
in which the data were collected, there could be different terms for the same
type of work or production. In case we did not find out, whether the errors
were due to the census enumerators or to the individuals entering the data into
the computer, we did not correct them. In addition to the occupation an
original-material-field was made, where the position
(apprentice/journeyman/master artisan ...) or the kind of the employment (self
employed/employed) can be found. Three different codebooks were built on basis
of this element. Otherwise it would hardly be possible to compute these data.
Occupation systematic (occsys): Here a tree-digit
systematic code was created that is related to the social position of the
individual and to the branch of the occupation. With the creation of these
codes, the research group tried to build social categories and groups, which in
our opinion, are sometimes problematic. Nevertheless, with a great deal of
care, it is possible to make some use of these.
The
first digit of this code is related to the economic classes; i.e. by using only
the first digit it is very simple to divide the occupations into the following
groups:
0 unknown, irrelevant
1 businessman
2 professional
3 minor trade
4 wage-labourer, incl. employees
5 service
6 agricultural occupation
By using the first two digits you get the
economic sections that are ordered in the following way:
0 unspec.
5 marginal occ.
6 unclear income
7 household
8 retired
9 clergy
11 real estate
12 trade, trans. enterpr.
13 production enterpr.
14 other enterpr.
15 financier
19 nobility
21 professional
22 artist
23 bureaucrat
24 empl, pub. enterp.
25 empl, local pub inst
26 teacher
28 military
29 politician
30 minor trade, genl.
31 building trade
32 wood-prod. trade
33 metal-prod. trade
34 leather/textile trade
35 clothing trade
36 food trade
37 commerce/hotel
38 transport trade
39 technical trade
40 day-labour/factory worker
42 textile prod.
43 clothing ind.
44 trans. worker
45 const. worker
46 tech. trade worker
47 worker, commerce/hotel
48 employee
49 other wage-labour
51 hh personnel
52 hh servant
53 agric. labourer
61 farmer
62 cottager
63 MEIER (bailiff ...)
64 agric. specialist
65 forestry
66 agric. worker
67 spec. agric. occ.
69 in agric. hh
Using all three digits creates a representation
of the systematic occupational code, by which the different occupations are
divided into smaller groups. You can find the labels for this code in the
codebook occup. The value 0 remarks unknown
occupations and the value 999 those that do not form proper occupations. A few
German terms, difficult to translate correctly, are left in the labels of this
codebook. The meaning of these labels is not a hundred percent correct, but something
like the terms listed here:
SAMMELTAETIGKEIT - gatherers ...
SPIELLEUTE, FAHRENDE - street entertainers
...
MEIER - bailiff
...
Occupational position (occpos): With the
values of the element occ it was also possible
to create codes for the occupational position like master artisan or
journeyman. But we only created codes for those cases, for which the position
is unmistakably expressed in the occupational title in the sources. Here you
can find the German term GEHILFE, BEFUGT and BUERGERLICH. GEHILFE is some kind
of worker, mostly a journeyman. BEFUGT means that a trader or artisan is not a
guild member, but has a special official license for his trade. BUERGERLICH is
only used for traders and master artisans who were town citizens and regular members
of the guilds. All the codes with two digits are related to occupational
positions, the codes with three digits to all the other information, concerning
the occupation or income.
Occupational supplement (occelse): On basis of the
original-material-field of the element occ
we also created a codebook that is a kind of collective code for the large
spectrum of other information in that element.
The
first digit of this two-digit code divides this spectrum into:
1
absence
2 kind of occupation
3 property
4 occupational position
5 kind of payment
6 employment
The element
bplace (birthplace) contains very different
qualities of information, depending on the differences of the source of every
sample. Starting with very exact information about the place of birth (partly
with details about the county or the state found in the original-material-field),
to be followed by a regional classification ending with rather inexact terms
like ‘foreign’. The element bplace
does not exist for two Swiss examples.
Standard
abbreviations of the bplace:
BOE =
KAE =
MAE =
NOE =
OOE =
STMK = Styria
UNG =
Regional codes (region): When the birthplace-codebook was created, it was our aim
to build a code-system on basis of the political situation of that period. The
most important criterion was to find a way to relate the different birthplaces
to a special region. In the course of this we found the same name for one
birthplace in different counties, and this made it impossible to create
reliable codes. For
The code 100 in every sample is reserved for
the place of enumeration
The code 110 in every sample is reserved for foreign
The code 120 in every sample is reserved for from abroad
The code 999 in every sample is reserved for homeless
The code 0 in every sample is reserved for unknown
This
element was already coded during the data entry and always occupies three
digits. This code consists of two parts. In case the first digit is 1 the code
is related to the head of household, 2 relates to the housewife and so on with
all the ‘roles’. The second digit shows the degree of relationship:
The number 1 means the first degree, 2 the second degree, 3 means individuals
related to the family by marriage and 0 is related to an unknown degree of
relationship. Here is a list of labels to the codes:
100 Indefinite relative of the head of
household
111 Parents of the head of household
113 Brothers and sisters of the head of household
114 Children of the head of household
115 Grandchildren of the head of household
121 Uncle/aunt of the head of household
122 Niece/nephew of the head of household
123 Cousin of the head of household
131 Parents in law of the head of household
132 Children in law of the head of household
133 brother/sister in law of the head of household
200 Indefinite relative of the housewife
211 Parents of the housewife
213 Brothers and sisters of the housewife
214 Children of the housewife
215 Grandchildren of the housewife
221 Uncle/aunt of the housewife
222 Niece/nephew of the housewife
223 Cousin of the housewife
231 Parents in law of the housewife
232 Children in law of the housewife
233 Brother/sister in law of the housewife
300 Indefinite relative of the son/daughter
311 Parents of the son/daughter
312 Spouse of the son/daughter
313 Brothers and sisters of the son/daughter
314 Children of the son/daughter
315 Grandchildren of the son/daughter
321 Uncle/aunt of the son/daughter
322 Niece/nephew of the son/daughter
323 Cousin of the son/daughter
331 Parents in law of the son/daughter
332 Children in law of the son/daughter
333 Brother/sister in law of the son/daughter
400 Indefinite relative of the servants
412 Married to servants
413 Brothers and sisters of the servants
414 Children of the servants
415 Grandchildren of the servants
500 Indefinite relative of the lodger1
511 Parents of the lodger1
512 Married to lodger1
513 Brothers and sisters of the lodger1
514 Children of the lodger1
520 Related of the lodger1
600 Indefinite relative of the lodger2
612 Married to lodger2
614 Child of lodger2
The element
else contains some more information about the status of the individual
in the household and in the society. When the codebook for this element was
created, we only tried to unite the material in unsystematic groups. In the
codebook specrole
you find the German label BETTGEHER/IN for bed renting lodgers.
The codes 10-18 are related to the position in
family and kinship
The codes 21-29 are related to the housing conditions
The codes 31-33 are related to the ownership of individuals
The codes 41-47 are related to partly absent individuals
The codes 50-55 are related to kind of occupation
The codes 60-91 are related to all the other information
The element
clauses is of the data type category
containing different kinds of information on the individual situation of a
person. The codes E, I and S contain information about the familial status, the
codes 1-9 contain information about namesakes, the codes K, V, M, G and O
contain the confession, the code Z is related to immigrants. In the SPSS data
this element is split into the variables famelse,
namesakes, religion and immigrant.
For all
questions or suggestions please send an e-mail to
annemarie.steidl@univie.ac.at
or heinrich.berger@univie.ac.at