Notes
See ‘Highest education level’
This question enquired as to whether the person was currently attending school, college, technikon or university and, where this was the case, distinguished between full-time and part-time study. The response options were:
• Yes, full-time
• Yes, part-time
• No
No definition was given in the questionnaire of ‘full-time’ or ‘part-time’ and respondents were thus required to interpret these terms themselves. Usually this should not be difficult as educational institutions define courses as full or part-time. However, if the respondent is giving information on behalf of someone else they may not be aware of the details of a course.
The questionnaire included an instruction to the effect that correspondence education, but not pre-school education, were to be included. The instruction read as follows: ‘This includes study by correspondence, but excludes creche and pre-school.’
Analysis of the results of this question indicated that there may have been a problem with the quality of the data. Some responses to this question contradicted responses given to a later question. That is, some persons recorded as not studying for question 16.3 were recorded as being ‘scholar/full-time student’ for question 18.1 on usual activity. The cause of this problem is not clear but respondents could have mistakenly thought that the question on studying applied only to post-school institutions as it appeared after the question on post-school qualifications. Where responses contradicted, the response to the second question was considered to be correct and the variable ‘Studying status’ was amended accordingly.
