Cape Area Panel Study – CAPS

Sample size: ~4800 

Coverage: All population groups living in the Cape Town metropolitan area of the Western Cape, South Africa

Included sections: Household composition, household services, literacy and numeracy evaluation, education, employment, health, beliefs, attitudes and marital status

Data: The survey’s documentation and data are available from DataFirst

Description 

The Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) is a longitudinal study of the lives of youths and young adults in metropolitan Cape Town, South Africa. The first wave of the study collected interviews from about 4800 randomly selected young people age 14-22 in August-December, 2002. Wave 1 also collected information on all members of these young people’s households, as well as a random sample of households that did not have members age 14-22. The youth sample was interviewed again in 2003-04 (Wave 2), 2005 (Wave 3) and 2006 (Wave 4). Wave 4 also includes a sample of individuals age 50 and over. The study covers a wide range of outcomes, including schooling, employment, health, family formation, and intergenerational support systems.

CAPS began in 2002 as a collaborative project of the Population Studies Center in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Other units involved in subsequent waves include SALDRU and the Research Program in Development Studies at Princeton University. Primary funding is provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). Additional funding has been provided by the Office of AIDS Research, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Institute of Aging of NIH, and by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the University of Michigan and the University of Cape Town.

For more information please visit the CAPS website