Data
KINMATRIX is free for registered researchers via GESIS; KINMATRIX-2 is available for collaborations ahead of its public release.
Available · Release 1.0.0
The wider kinship networks of younger adults: parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and step- and half-relatives on both sides of the family.
Forthcoming · Early access
Extends the design to midlife and to ties by partnership. New modules cover related strangers, support, struggles, growing up with kin, and kinkeeping.
What is in the data
The data come as a long-format file linking four sets of variables. The data description in Demographic Research covers them in detail.
Socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, family structure and biography (e.g., parental and grandparental separation), family norms and attitudes, and personal characteristics such as subjective social status, life satisfaction, and self-rated health.
For each living relative: emotional closeness, contact frequency, travel distance, conflict, and support received (money, advice, comfort, childcare). Plus who was important (alive or deceased) and who could be counted on in future times of need.
Age, sex, and vital status of every relative, plus education, employment, subjective social status, and health. For complex kin, timing and duration of coresidence.
Weights, interview date and duration, self-assessed response quality, and flags for observed quality issues such as don’t-knows, invalid names, straightlining, and implausible kin attributes.
Data quality
KINMATRIX is a quota-based web survey. We have compared it with demographic kinship projections, Dutch and Swedish registers, and several probability surveys (ESS, ISSP, GGS, pairfam).
Numbers of siblings and cousins tend to be lower than in demographic projections, but differences between countries are preserved for nearly all kin types. Relationship measures reproduce well-known contrasts such as the north–south gradient in contact and coresidence.
Diffené, Leopold, Raab & Buyukkececi (2026), Demographic Research, 54, 1375–1412
Do country differences in KINMATRIX match demographic projections? Correlation across countries, by kin type
Citing KINMATRIX
Leopold, T., Becker, C. C., Buyukkececi, Z., Çineli, B., & Raab, M. (2025). KINMATRIX – Uncovering the kinship matrix (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. GESIS. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.14380
Leopold, T., Becker, C. C., Buyukkececi, Z., Çineli, B., & Raab, M. (2024). KINMATRIX: A new data resource for studies of families and kinship. Demographic Research, 51, 791–810. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2024.51.25
Data releases, new publications, and events, a few times a year.