Criteria for detection of married or cohabiting couples in the UK Biobank

Kristen M. Kelly, Tanya B. Horwitz and Matthew C. Keller

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 383, issue C

Abstract: The UK Biobank (UKB) dataset contains a large number of spouse/partner pairs (hereafter, “couples”), making it a valuable resource for research on human mating. UKB data does not report relationships between participants, and UKB's preliminary participant colocation data (based on participants sharing the same street address) is not available for new researchers to request. This has led to different criteria for identification of spouse/partner pairs and highly discrepant sample sizes across papers, potentially contributing to heterogeneity in results. To address this, we developed and validated a standardized method for identifying couples that maximizes sample size while minimizing selection bias.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953625008068
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:383:y:2025:i:c:s0277953625008068

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118475

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().