Hong Kong Generations and Gender Survey (HK-GGS)

The HK-GGS is an online sample survey of attitudes towards gender roles, inequality and intergenerational relations in Hong Kong SAR, PRC. The HK-GGS will utilise an international survey which has been implemented around the world in many different countries through the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP). The GGP is a system of national surveys and contextual databases concerning European and some non-European countries. The main substantive goal of the GGP is to improve our understanding of demographic and social developments and of the factors that influence these developments, with particular attention towards relationships between children and parents (generations) and relationships between partners (gender) (Macura, 2002). The Gender and Generations Survey (GGS) has a panel design and it started in the early 2000s in Europe designed to help improve the understanding of demographic and social development and of the factors that influence these developments.

The GGS collects individual level data on key demographic events such as leaving parental home, union formation and dissolution, childbirths and deaths that structure individual life courses and family/kinship networks. Moreover, relationships between generations are explored to reveal how lives of multiple family members are interlinked in ageing populations. These processes are investigated along with the evolution of social roles of women and men, being one of the major constituents of societal transformation over recent decades. The GGS collects, processes, and curate’s data from almost 30 countries and provides the research community with data dating back over 30 years. The questionnaire has been thoroughly validated and tested and its data used in more than 1000 publications by scientists.

The HK-GGS has been approved by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Human Ethics Research Committee. This study is being undertaken by the HKUST Population Laboratory (PopLab) headed by Dr. Stuart A. Gietel-Basten. The HKUST PopLab team conducted the HK-GGS pilot study from May to July, 2021. The team will undertake the HK-GGS Wave 1 during the first quarter of 2023. The HK-GGS Wave 1 respondents belong to the age group, 18 to 59.