For the purpose of studying the changes in China's families, we conducted a survey of the current status, changes, and evolution of families in the five cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Chengdu. Our respondents were married women [aged 20-94 who married between 1900 and 1982], and the researchers comprised comrades from nine work units in the five cities who were engaged in sociology teaching and research. The method we used was a survey of purposive cluster sampling. From the five cities we chose eight neighborhood committees as clusters, each comprising no less than 400 families. Altogether we surveyed 5,057 married women in 4,385 families. The investigation was administered through a standard questionnaire at a given point in time. The questionnaire listed twenty-seven items involving marriage, family, and birth. They included not only questions about the marriage, family, and birth of the women themselves, but also information concerning their parents and parents-in-law at the time of their marriage as well as the families of their married children, plus their educational background, occupation, and earnings. All this provided useful data for our probe into the history and changes of marriage and the family. The survey was conducted at the end of 1982. The interviewers were people working for women's organizations at the grass-roots level, and college students who interned in social survey. After a short period of training, they visited the families to retrieve the questionnaires. The responses were then checked by the investigation supervisors, with an effective response rate as high as 93.03 percent. Raw data from the questionnaires were processed by computer, and the primary findings were published in one book. Based on the preliminary findings, this article is designed to give an initial analysis of the evolution and changes of families in Chinese cities.