Surveys
The Cape Area Study and Cape Area Panel Study comprise the core of the Social Survey Unit's work.
The Cape Area Study (CAS) comprises a series of surveys covering a wide range on topics in the social sciences. Over time, the Cape Area Study will have a quality that is unique in South Africa (and perhaps Africa as a whole): there will be an accumulation of data on a focused social setting across a span of time such that the 'whole' is substantially more powerful than the 'sum of the parts'. The first three surveys in the Cape Area Study series were a survey focused on labour market behaviour conducted in parts of Cape Town in 2000, a household survey forming part of the first wave of the Cape Area Panel Study in 2002, and a survey of social and political attitudes and behaviour conducted in 2003.
The Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) is a panel study of young adults in Cape Town. This is possibly the largest true panel study underway in Africa. At the outset, in 2002, we interviewed just under 5000 young adults, aged between 14 and 22; we also collected data on the households in which they lived and asked our young adult respondents to complete a literacy and numeracy test. Between 2003 and 2008, we shall be re-interviewing each of our respondents another four times, generating a powerful panel data-set on experiences of adolescence in terms of schooling, entry into the labour market, health, sexual behaviour, social and emotional relationships, changing living arrangements and relations with kin, pregnancy and birth, and social attitudes.
The Social Survey Unit also supports a number of other smaller surveys.
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