Secondary Data Analysis

POCKET GUIDES TO
SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH METHODS
Series Editor
Tony Tripodi, DSW
Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University

Determining Sample Size: Intervention Research:

Balancing Power, Precision, and Developing Social Programs
Practicality Mark W. Fraser, Jack M.
Patrick Dattalo Richman, Maeda J. Galinsky, and
Preparing Research Articles Steven H. Day
Bruce A. Thyer Developing and Validating Rapid
Systematic Reviews and Assessment Instruments
Meta-Analysis Neil Abell, David W. Springer,
Julia H. Littell, Jacqueline and Akihito Kamata
Corcoran, and Vijayan Pillai Clinical Data-Mining:
Historical Research Integrating Practice and Research
Elizabeth Ann Danto Irwin Epstein
Confirmatory Factor Analysis Strategies to Approximate Random
Donna Harrington Sampling and Assignment
Patrick Dattalo
Randomized Controlled Trials:
Design and Implementation for Analyzing Single System
Community-Based Psychosocial Design Data
Interventions William R. Nugent
Phyllis Solomon, Mary M. Survival Analysis
Cavanaugh, and Jeffrey Draine Shenyang Guo
Needs Assessment The Dissertation:
David Royse, Michele From Beginning to End
Staton-Tindall, Karen Badger, and Peter Lyons and Howard J.
J. Matthew Webster Doueck
Multiple Regression with Discrete Cross-Cultural Research
Dependent Variables Jorge Delva, Paula Allen-Meares,
John G. Orme and Terri and Sandra L. Momper
Combs-Orme Secondary Data Analysis
Developing Cross-Cultural Thomas P. Vartanian
Measurement
Thanh V. Tran
 THOMAS P. VARTANIAN

Secondary Data Analysis

1 2011
 1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vartanian, Thomas P.
Secondary data analysis / Thomas P. Vartanian.
p. cm. — (Pocket guides to social work research methods)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-538881-7
1. Social service—Research. I. Title.
HV11.V347 2011
361.0072’3—dc22 2010016027

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Barb Toews, Marie Guldin, and Molly Graepel for
their research assistance on this book, and Philip Gleason and Linda
Houser for their helpful comments during the writing of this book.
Funding for this research was provided by Bryn Mawr College.
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

1 Introduction 3

2 What is a Secondary Data Set? 9

3 Advantages, Disadvantages, Feasability, and Appropriateness of

Using Secondary Data 13
Advantages of Secondary Data
Disadvantages to Secondary Data
Determining the Feasibility and Appropriateness of Using
Secondary Data

4 Secondary Datasets 23
Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System
Child Neglect: Cross Sector Service Path and Outcomes
Common Core of Data
Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals
Current Population Survey
Developmental Victimization Survey
Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey
Fragile Family and Child Well-Being Study
General Social Survey
Health and Retirement Study
Longitudinal Studies Of Child Abuse and Neglect
viii Contents

National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System

National Educational Longitudinal Survey
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
National Longitudinal Surveys
National Medical Expenditure Survey/Medical Expenditure
Panel Survey
National Survey of American Families
National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being
NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics
Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Child Development Supplement
Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
Public-Use Microdata Samples
School Data Direct
Survey of Income and Program Participation
Survey of Program Dynamics
United States Census
Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three City Study

Appendix Tables 145

Glossary 173

References 176

Index 209
Secondary Data Analysis
This page intentionally left blank
 1

Introduction

S ocial work research has become increasingly reliant on large second-

ary data sets. These data sets, generally collected by governments,
research institutions, and, in some cases, agencies, provide researchers
with readily available resources to examine characteristics of populations
or particular hypotheses. These data differ from primary data in that
primary data sets are collected by the researcher who will also examine
that data. Researchers collect primary data directly through interviews,
questionnaires, focus groups, observation, the examination of primary
sources such as writings or speeches, or a variety of other such collection
methods. While collecting data is often the best way to obtain the infor-
mation necessary to analyze particular hypotheses, it is not always eco-
nomically or practically feasible. Using large secondary data sets provides
an alternative to the collection of primary data, often giving the researcher
access to more information than would be available in primary data sets.
Secondary data can include any data that are examined to answer a
research question other than the question(s) for which the data were ini-
tially collected. Large institutions are able to obtain far larger samples
and often are able to ask more questions than researchers who are in
smaller settings (such as individual or small-group researchers). Over
time, data sets have become richer, as researchers refine the types of
questions asked in surveys. That being said, many secondary data sets
available were primary data sets when they first started, and they grew to

3
4 Secondary Data Analysis

become the larger data sets that they now are. Also, many of the second-
ary data sets available today look to primary researchers, often qualitative
researchers, for the questions that they ask their sample members.
Without such fieldwork by primary researchers, larger secondary data
sets would not be as rich as they are.
To give an example of how research has changed over time, I exam-
ine Social Service Review(SSR) during 1980 and 2007 (I randomly picked
these two years) to determine the data sources for articles published in
those years. In 1980, approximately 32 articles were published in SSR as
main articles or notes, and, of these, six used some form of secondary
data, either administrative or survey data; nine used primary data
sources; and 17 of the articles used no data. Things changed dramatically
by 2007, when, of the 22 articles published that year, 18 used some form
of large data set, primarily secondary survey data; one used primary data;
and three used no data. Although this is only a “snapshot” of a trend
based on one elite social work journal, it would appear that the use of
secondary data is becoming increasingly important.
In this book, I will briefly discuss what secondary data sets look like,
as well as some of the advantages and disadvantages of collecting and
using primary, and secondary, data in a research study. I will take you
through a series of questions to help you decide which type of data will
work best for your research question. I then turn my attention to the
central topic of the book, the use of secondary data sets.
This book examines the types of secondary data sets available to
researchers and how these have been used in the past and may be used in
the future. While thousands of secondary data sets are available from
private sources, universities, federal and other government agencies, and
other public sources, I focus on data sets that are often used by social
work and other social science researchers. Many of these data sets cover
a wide variety of topics; others focus on particular topics or populations.
Some are longitudinal, while others are cross-sectional, and they can
cover either short or long periods of time. Some data sets use monthly
information;others use annual or biannual information. Some data sets
are nationally representative; others cover only specific populations.
I examine the costs and benefits of using these different types of data sets
and the reasons for using particular data sets given particular types of
research questions or populations. I also describe how to get the data,
 Introduction 5

where to find the codebooks that describe the variables contained in

the data, the costs involved in the use of the data, and, in some instances,
how to best use the data for analyses. Some of these data are relatively
easy to access, generally by downloading them from websites, while
others require contracts and cost a good deal of money to obtain.
I describe surveys that cover a wide range of populations and topics.
I first do this by going over some of the details, characteristics, popula-
tions, and variable types of 29 popular and informative surveys. I also
examine which of these data sets are best used for particular types of
research questions. For example, if you are interested in the study of the
effect of childhood factors on particular adult outcomes, a number of
longitudinal data sets span a great number of years and include children
who become adults over the years of the survey.
Below, I give an overview of some of the populations and topics I
cover in the book. Many of the data sets that I examine contain numer-
ous populations and topic areas, and I include particular data sets in
several topic or population areas.
For childhood data sets, I look at several data sets in which children’s
mental, emotional, and physical health; bonds with parents; and eco-
nomic well-being are examined. These include:

• The Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Child Development

Supplement (CDS),
• The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
(PHDCN),
• The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(NICHD) Study of Early Child Care And Youth Development,
• The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS),
• The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being,
• The National Survey of American Families (NSAF),
• The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
(Add Health),
• The Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS),
• The National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS),
• Welfare, Children and Families: A Three-City Study, and
• The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System
(AFCARS).
6 Secondary Data Analysis

I describe data for child populations that suffer from abuse and neglect,
such as:

• The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS),

• Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN),
• Developmental Victimization Survey (DVS),
• Child Neglect: Cross Sector Service Paths and Outcomes (CN),
and
• The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
(PHDCN).

I also look at a number of surveys related to schooling, which include

information relating to grades completed, types of schools attended,
grades in particular subject areas, and level of education of populations:

• The National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS),

• School Data Direct (SDD),
• Common Core of Data (CCD),
• The Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Child Development
Supplement (CDS),
• Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS),
• The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
(PHDCN),
• The Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS),
• The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP),
• The U.S. Census, and
• Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three City Study.

I examine surveys that ask about adult and children’s health out-
comes, including:

• The Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Child Development

Supplement (CDS),
• Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS),
• The Health and Retirement Study,
• The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP),
• The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
(Add Health),
 Introduction 7

• The Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS),

• The General Social Survey (GSS),
• The National Longitudinal Survey (NLS),
• The National Survey of American Families (NSAF),
• National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being
(NSCAWB),
• The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development,
and
• National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES)/Medical
Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS).

I also examine which data sets are best for use to study those who use
government programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF, formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children), Supple-
mental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp
Program), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security (SS),
Medicaid, Medicare, and other such programs. These data sets include:

• The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID),

• The Child Development Supplement (CDS),
• Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS),
• The National Longitudinal Survey (NLS),
• Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD),
• Welfare, Children and Families: A Three-City Study,
• Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS),
• Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals (CSFII),
• National Survey of American Families (NSAF), and
• The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).

I also examine data sets that work best for those who are elderly or
going into retirement:

• The Health and Retirement Survey (HRS),

• The National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men (NLS),
• The National Longitudinal Survey of Older Women (NLS),
• The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and
• The Current Population Survey (CPS).
8 Secondary Data Analysis

Other topic areas that can be examined with these data sets and will
be discussed in the book include child care, mental health, neighborhood
perceptions and characteristics, food insecurity, housing, income and
poverty, birth weight, sexual activity, sexually transmitted diseases,
physical activity, prescription and illegal drug use, dating and domestic
violence, home environment, and emotional and general well-being.
 2

What is a Secondary Data Set?

A large secondary data set typically covers a broad sample of individu-

als or other entities (e.g., schools, hospitals) and is generally represen-
tative of some broader population—if not for the entire U.S. population,
then for some subpopulation or region of the country. Most primary data
sets are not as comprehensive as many large secondary data sets in repre-
senting either the entire population or large segments of the population.
Some of the data sets covered in the book are nationally representative of
the U.S. population, such as the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
(for the nonimmigrant U.S. population), the National Longitudinal
Study (NLS), and the Survey of Income and Program Participation
(SIPP). Other samples are representative only of certain populations; for
example, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
(PHDCN) is representative of all individuals in the city of Chicago; the
National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) is represen-
tative of those children whose alleged victimization was reported to child
and protective services; the National Educational Longitudinal Survey
(NELS) is representative of eighth graders in 1988; and the Developmental
Victimization Survey (DVS) is representative of children aged 2–17 years
old living in the contiguous United States. The data sets for the entire
population generally have smaller sample sizes for specific subgroups,
posing potential problems for researchers interested in those subgroups.
On the other hand, surveys for specific populations may have larger

9
10 Secondary Data Analysis

samples than the more general surveys (such as the PSID), but may offer
researchers limited opportunities for comparison with other populations.
The data sets being examined in this book generally use sophisticated
sampling designs to obtain, at a reasonable cost, a sample that is both
fairly large and representative of either the broad population or the
specific population of their study. For example, the PSID, which started
in 1968, comprises two independent national samples: a cross-sectional
sample [called the Survey Research Center (SRC) sample], based on
stratified multistage selection of the civilian noninstitutional population
of the United States, and a sample of low-income families [called the
Survey of Economic Opportunities (SEO) sample]. Both of these are
probability samples (samples that use some form of random selection
within a known population). Some groups in the PSID, such as African
Americans and those living in large, urban areas, were oversampled in
order to obtain large sample sizes for these groups. Sampling weights are
then used to make the PSID representative of the U.S. population.
Other data sets use similar types of methodology to make them
nationally representative, often oversampling particular groups of inter-
est (such as welfare recipients or those who are food insecure), and pro-
viding sampling weights so that the data is representative of some
population. These types of sampling strategies are possible for data sets
such as the PSID because the PSID is funded by a large variety of govern-
ment agencies, including the Office of Economic Opportunity of the U.S.
Department of Commerce, the National Science Foundation, the
National Institute on Aging, and the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development. Several private foundations also help support
the PSID. The annual cost of running the PSID, including interviewing,
is somewhere in the area of $3.24 million (in 2009 dollars) (Duncan,
1999).
Other organizations that collect survey data use similarly complex
sampling strategies to obtain representative samples. The Fragile Families
and Child Well Being study, for example, is administered through a joint
effort by the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing and the Center for
Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University, and the Columbia
Population Research Center and The National Center for Children and
Families at Columbia University. The Fragile Families sample is drawn
by randomly sampling births, from within randomly selected hospitals,
from large U.S. cities using stratified random selection. Prior to random
 What is a Secondary Data Set? 11

sampling, large U.S. cities were grouped (i.e., stratified) according to

their policy environments and labor market conditions in order to
ensure representation from a range of policy environments. The com-
plexity of the sampling strategy demanded equally complex techniques
for weighting the data to be representative either of large U.S. cities with
populations of 200,000 or more or of the 20 sampled cities. Data were
collected by Mathematica Policy Research, a firm specializing in such
data collection. The resultant sample is distinguished by its utility for
studies of state and city policy environments, its focus on nonmarital
households, and its efforts to interview fathers, both at their children’s
birth and thereafter. The researchers were able to get information from
three-quarters of nonmarital fathers, making these data richer and more
complete than previous studies of single mothers.
Some large data sets, such as the Survey of Income and Program
Participation (SIPP), the U.S. Census, the Public-Use Microdata Samples,
the Current Population Survey (CPS), and the National Educational
Longitudinal Survey, are conducted by the Federal Government. Each of
these data sets has complex survey methods and large sample sizes, and is
nationally representative (or a survey of the entire population) for either
specific populations (such as eighth graders for the NELS), or for the
entire population (such as the SIPP or the CPS).
Most of the data sets that will be examined in this book are not only
nationally or locally representative, but also cover a very broad range of
topics. For example, the PHDCN currently has three waves of data, and
it includes individual and family information, such as basic as well as
detailed demographics, family mental health, exposure to violence,
parental warmth and involvement, social support, community involve-
ment, neighborhood structure, legal and health history, and family rela-
tionships. Because the focus of the study is on the very young, a vast
amount of information is available on infants’ temperament, physical
growth and development, cognition, and maternal pregnancy condi-
tions. Roughly 27 instruments and scales are used in the first wave of
data collection study (with as many or more instruments and scales in
subsequent waves), including the Kagan Mobile Task/Latency to Grasp,
the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, the Infant Behavior Rating, and the
Growth Assessment Form. Other instruments in the survey measure
emotional and physical home environment and child maltreatment. The
PHDCN also includes a community survey; systematic, in-person social
12 Secondary Data Analysis

observations and videotape of physical, social and economic neighbor-

hood characteristics; and neighborhood data from 343 neighborhood
clusters (where neighborhoods are determined by ecologically meaning-
ful physical areas). Likewise, the SIPP includes a wide array of variables,
to examine a wide range of topics. Generally, each variable is collected
for each family on a monthly basis over a 2-½ to 4-year period. Special
modules are included in the SIPP data, however, so that those with par-
ticular types of disabilities can be identified, and wealth and school
financing can be examined (to give just a few examples of modules).
While most of the data sets described so far are longitudinal, many
data sets are cross-sectional, such as the CPS, administered by the Bureau
of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the CPS data, the
same questions are asked for each of the different months of the survey,
but new samples are drawn for each sampling period (with some overlap
of sample members from one month to the next). Other cross-sectional
data sets examined in this book include the Public Use Microdata Sample
(PUMS), the U.S. Census, and the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by
Individuals. Often, the sample sizes for these cross-sectional data sets are
larger than for the longitudinal data sets, allowing for greater precision in
estimation. It is possible for a cross-sectional data set to be for a single
year, or for many years. Generally, when using a single cross-sectional
year of data, it is difficult to examine cause-and-effect relationships
because the cause must precede the effect (although it is sometimes pos-
sible when retrospective questions are asked). When using a data set such
as the CPS, which contains many cross-sectional years, we may be able to
examine how factors in previous years affect outcomes in subsequent
years.
In this book, I refer to data sets as large, in terms of both the number
of observations and the number of discrete pieces of information about
each observation. Data collection may have occurred over relatively
short or long periods of time. They generally contain hundreds or
thousands of questions.
 3

Advantages, Disadvantages,
Feasibility, and Appropriateness
of Using Secondary Data

A s noted earlier, there are some good reasons for using secondary
data, including access to large amounts of information, coverage of
a broad range of individuals or other entities (e.g., schools, hospitals),
and the facts that secondary data generally are representative of some
broader population and cover a broad range of topics. In this chapter,
I will briefly examine benefits and costs associated with the use of
such and how these compare to the design, collection, organization, and
use of primary data. A number of questions will then be posed to help
readers determine the feasibility and appropriateness of using either
secondary or primary data.

ADVANTAGES OF SECONDARY DATA

As noted earlier, secondary data sets tend to be far less costly and take far
less time to organize (in terms of putting the data together in working
form for data analysis) relative to primary data sets. It can take a consid-
erable amount of time to design, collect, and then organize the data in a

13
14 Secondary Data Analysis

primary data set. Often, secondary data are available for no cost on the
Internet or through arrangements with the sponsoring organization or
government agency. Whereas 20 or 30 years ago the breadth and quality
of these data sets may have been in question, secondary data sets today
cover a broad array of topics, and the quality of these data sets, from
reputable organizations, is often high. Generally, the sample size and the
number of discrete units of data collected for each sample member are
much higher than what can be collected in a primary data set. Having
several hundred observations with a limited amount of information
from each of those observations is more the norm for primary data sets,
due to cost considerations. These limitations on primary data sets often
make it difficult to apply advanced analysis techniques. With large data
sets, researchers often can take advantage of advanced statistical tech-
niques, such as fixed-effect modeling or hierarchical linear modeling.
Using existing data may allow for the prompt examination of current
policy issues. Because many existing data sets have been designed to
capture policy-relevant outcomes (such as income, food security, or
well-being), they have the potential to begin capturing policy effects as
soon as policy shifts. For example, welfare policy and food stamp policy
were changed in 1996, and a number of data sets (such as the National
Survey of America’s Families, Survey of Program Dynamics, and Welfare,
Children, and Families: A Three-City Study) were set up specifically to
capture immediate policy effects.
Large secondary data sets often span a great length of time, in years
or months. Some secondary longitudinal data sets, such as the Panel
Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Survey, have
been collected for decades. This means that individuals or families can
be followed for a very long period. Thus, with this type of data, you are
able to capture intergenerational effects, factors that affect long-term
mobility, or long-term consequences of particular events.
Secondary data often come prepared for use with software (including
SAS, STATA, and SPSS) to assist in data organizing, coding, and analysis.
Thus, instead of having to code all of your variables, an often time-
consuming process, you can sometimes go straight to your analyses, or
do minimal amounts of programming to get to your analyses. For exam-
ple, when you download data from the PSID web page, the data come
in SAS, Stata, Excel, SPSS, Database File (DBS), or a SAS transport file.
The PSID also includes data books, for only the variables you have
 Using Secondary Data 15

chosen, that can be downloaded in PDF, XML, or HTML formats. The

Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR),
which contains a very large number of data sets, often provides users
with similar types of SAS, SPSS, and Stata files that go along with the data
to make for easier use. Some data sets come with programming code that
can be used to identify missing values for variables, which again saves
time for the end user.
Once users become familiar with one or several of the large data sets,
users often find that they can address a great variety of questions using
these data sets. Thus, while one may be interested in one set of questions
when first using the data, once familiar with the data, other questions
come to mind, and these questions can be answered in a fairly straight-
forward way. For example, in the PHDCN data, you may first be inter-
ested in how neighborhoods affect child behavioral outcomes. In working
with the data, you may find that other interesting variables are available
in the data, such as the potential effects of crime and violence, illegal drug
use, and sexual activity. You can then use these new variables as either
predictor or outcome variables.

DISADVANTAGES TO SECONDARY DATA

While secondary data present many opportunities for researchers, there
are still good reasons for using primary data. One of the problems with
using secondary data is lack of control over the framing and wording of
survey items. This may mean that questions important to your study are
not included in the data. Also, subtleties often matter a great deal in
research, and secondary data may get to broader or related questions,
but not to the exact question being posed by your research. Thus, you
may be looking at particular definitions of concepts such as abuse,
depression, or intelligence that may differ greatly from the definitions of
such concepts in the survey data. Often, the survey may get to broader
conceptualizations, whereas you may be looking for more specific aspects
of a concept. For example, race may be limited to a few, mutually exclu-
sive categories, whereas your study focuses on a nuanced understanding
of race, including the multiplicity of ways in which individuals under-
stand their own racial identities. It is also possible that the questions you
desire may be asked, but of the wrong people. For example, many data
16 Secondary Data Analysis

sets include information gathered from a single source, often whoever is

considered to be the head of household, about the entire household or
family. Thus, the questions may ask about how much a grandmother
takes care of the children or the amount of play time for children. While
the source of the information may have a good idea of these answers, it is
always possible that they do not and yet may feel a need to answer the
questions that are asked of them.
While sample sizes are usually larger for secondary data sources, this
may not always be the case. When researchers are examining specific
subpopulations, such as children with autism, single fathers, or cohabi-
tating gay or lesbian families, large data sets, representative of broad or
even national populations, may have insufficient sample sizes to conduct
valid analyses for these groups. Some data sources may have only recently
started looking for or using questions to identify such groups. Thus,
it may be difficult to find an existing data source that will allow you to
study a topic like the long-term effects of autism.
All large-scale data sets contain identifiers for families and individu-
als within the families, and they may contain household identifiers as
well. This doesn’t mean that you will be able to identify the individuals
in the data set, for example, to obtain additional information from
them from outside of the data (and shouldn’t be able to identify such
individuals, given standard research participation protections). Thus,
it is impossible to get additional or follow-up information from the
people who have participated in the survey. In contrast, the opportunity
to re-contact participants to request additional interviews or to follow-
up with specific questions may (or may not) be built into the collection
of primary data. With primary data, there is the possibility of attaining
following-up answers to additional questions; this is not the case with
secondary data. Of course, secondary longitudinal data may add ques-
tions that are of interest to the researcher in the next phase of the survey.
Depending on the size of the ongoing data-collection efforts, interested
researchers have at times advocated successfully for the inclusion of
additional questions in subsequent data collection waves.
Data sets collected in the past cannot answer questions about a just-
implemented policy change. For these recent issues, one can wait for
questions relating to this topic to appear on an existing data set, or go out
and collect the data in a primary research sample.
In many ways, users of secondary data trade control over the condi-
tions and quality of the data collection for accessibility, convenience, and
 Using Secondary Data 17

reduced costs in time, money, and inconvenience to participants. This

lack of researcher control manifests itself in several ways. For example,
you may know the questions comprising the survey, but you probably
will not know how they were asked. Were there great differences among
the interviewers? How many interviewers were there? Did respondents
understand the questions? Are there particular questions that may be
difficult for respondents to understand and that may have great variabil-
ity in responses? Is there information about the response rate? If it is low,
what does this mean? Who are the sponsors of the data collection and do
they have an agenda to find particular outcomes? How has the data been
“cleaned” or, in other words, have missing data been imputed in some
way? If so, how? Is this a good method for imputation? Some of these
same questions could be asked of primary research, but, generally, pri-
mary researchers will have more control over these issues relative to
those using secondary data.
Many of the secondary data sets discussed in this volume are very
large and complex, and they may take researchers a long time to fully
understand. This may make starting to work on one of these data sets a
bit daunting. Before beginning, it is important to fully research types of
available data sets and understand which groups are included in the
survey, how the sample was constructed, and what kinds of sampling
weights to use if weighting of the data is necessary. Weighting the data in
your analyses can be a particularly difficult process. Do you use individ-
ual weights, family weights, or household weights, and for what years do
you use these weights? If you are examining a longitudinal data set, you
may wonder if you use weights from the first year or years or from the
last years.
Secondary data may subvert the research process by “driving the
question,” or only looking at questions that can be answered by the avail-
able data. Researchers need to keep in mind that this sort of approach
may be appropriate for doing exploratory work and for developing
hypotheses, but not for testing hypotheses.

DETERMINING THE FEASIBILITY AND APPROPRIATENESS OF USING

SECONDARY DATA
This section will take readers through a list of questions that they should
ask themselves before starting a research project to determine whether
18 Secondary Data Analysis

using primary or secondary data would best serve their research. It gives
some guidance as to whether using secondary data is appropriate, and
which data set to use if it is. The questions are intended to help readers
determine, first, which would be the most appropriate of a variety
of available data sets, and, second, whether the data set, once chosen,
contains key information.

1. Is the population from which the sample is drawn appropriate for

the planned research?
Researchers need to make sure that they are sampling from the
appropriate populations in order to be able to do their research.
If they fail to get an appropriate sample, they will not be able to
do the research they wish to do. For example, if you wish to
examine patients from mental health institutions, and such
patients are not included in the sampling frame, the data will not
be appropriate for such a study. Even if the sample includes
people from mental health hospitals, variables in the data must
contain information about whether the respondent was in a
mental health hospital. Often, sampling frames (or the
population surveyed) do not include those in institutional
settings or the military.
2. Is the dependent variable contained in the data?
This is one of the most important questions to ask. If the answer
is “no,” the question then becomes: Is there a variable that is
conceptually comparable to the variable that you would like to
use? If the answer to this is also “no,” then you will not use these
data. However, if the answer is yes, then you may want to
consider these data. You will need to determine how conceptually
far away this variable is from the variable you would truly like to
use, and the consequences of this. For example, you are using
longitudinal data and hypothesize that childhood health affects
the type of neighborhood the individual will live in as an adult.
The longitudinal data may have information on average income
in the adult neighborhood or the respondent’s perception of the
adult neighborhood (Is it safe? Is it poor? Is it really poor?). Your
preferred variable may be the percentage of the population living
below the poverty line in the adult neighborhood. Are these
measures close enough for you to use these data for your work?
 Using Secondary Data 19

3. Are the necessary independent variables of interest available?

This is sometimes a trickier question than the dependent variable
question because there are oftentimes many variables that you
will need as both primary independent and control variables. You
first need to develop (either formally or informally) the
conceptual model at the basis of the issue you are analyzing,
which should suggest which are the main independent variables
you hypothesize will influence your dependent variable, as well as
the other variables that might be related to that dependent
variable and should be included as control variables. Once you’ve
done this, you could then check the literature to see if there are
alternative hypotheses that suggest additional variables to
include. Equally important is the specificity of the measurement.
For example, if you are examining the effects of childhood mental
health problems as a primary independent variable, you must ask
yourself whether having this as a yes/no question is sufficient for
testing your hypothesis. Do you instead need the degree of
impairment or specific type of mental health problem to better
examine the effects of mental health on some outcome? Who is
asked the question? Who has determined that the child has
such a diagnosis: a physician or specialist, or a parent or other
caregiver?
The same kinds of questions can be asked about other control
variables or variables that examine alternative hypotheses. First,
are variables available to test alternative hypotheses? Is it truly a
mental health problem that is affecting the outcome, or is it some
other variable that others have found to be important and that
you may need to control? If the data does not include variables
for these alternative hypotheses, you may get biased results.
4. If replicating a study, how do these data differ from those used
previously, and will this make a difference in running and
interpreting analyses?
It may make little difference that the variables available in your
data differ somewhat from the variables in the original study,
if you are concerned not about completely replicating the
previous work, but only in finding whether results differ when
variables are specified in a slightly different way. If you are mainly
concerned with using a different set of data to see if the results
20 Secondary Data Analysis

from a previous study hold, however, then finding a data set with
the same variables will be important.
5. Does the available data have adequate identifiers for the target
groups for analysis (women with Alzheimer’s, adolescents with
eating disorders, children of gay couples)?
Without such identifiers, it will be impossible to conduct the
planned analyses for your study. If these identifiers are available,
you must then determine if the sample sizes for sub-groups are
large enough to run analyses. It’s often difficult to determine
what sample size is “big enough.” Obviously, having more
observations per included variable will help you find relationships
when they exist in the population. If you are running
nonparametric analyses, this need for larger sample sizes becomes
greater in order to adequately test your hypotheses.
6. Is it important to be able to generalize results to the
general population (of the United States, for example),
to specific populations (such as the elderly), or to a far
lower-level population (such as clients of a particular clinic)?
If you need to generalize to a more broadly defined population,
then using a secondary data set will likely be the way to go. If you
need only to generalize to a lower-level group, then using primary
data may be a more feasible and appropriate option. It is possible
that data have already been collected from some lower-level
group, such as a clinic, but this isn’t likely. Even if the data have
been collected, it’s unlikely that such data will contain the kinds
of information that you need, so collecting data will probably be
the best way to examine your hypotheses.
7. Does the data set of interest require special authorization to
obtain?
Some data sets are available only with special contracts because of
the confidential nature of the data and risk that its specificity may
compromise individuals’ identities. Often, these contracts require
the researcher and his or her institution to sign contracts, with
fees attached, for use of the data. You will need to determine
whether your institution will be willing to incur the risks of your
use of such data. Generally, institutions with such data, such as
 Using Secondary Data 21

the federal government and universities, have become more

stringent in their requirements for granting data access. Doctoral
students often cannot receive such data without having the
doctoral chair or some other high-ranking person or fiduciary
agent accept the data for the doctoral student. Such data must be
kept off-line, and it cannot be kept on networks that back up the
data. Passwords for accessing the data and data encryption are
often necessary as conditions for receiving the data. Often,
contracts for specific periods of time must be signed, and the data
must be destroyed after the contract expires. Generally, the data
must be used only at the institution, not at home. The use of such
data sets sometimes costs money, as well. For example, for using
the restricted version of the PSID, $750 must be paid to the
Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan for each
project that uses the data. Often, these data sets will contain a
public-use component that does not include the potentially
identifying information, which is available to researchers without
special permission.
8. Do you, or someone you can hire, have the programming skills to
use the data?
Some data sets are quite complicated and require advanced skills
in programming in SAS, Stata, or SPSS. If you lack these skills,
you will not be able to use some of the data sets described in this
book, or you may need to hire a programmer to work with you.
On the other hand, many data sets are far less complicated than
they were only several years ago. For example, many data sets
available on the web include SAS, Stata, and SPSS programs that
allow you to input and format the data without having to write
your own code. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have code to
write. Eliminating missing values, combining and constructing
variables, and extracting data for particular years or
subpopulations will require some degree of programming skill.
In my own work, much of my day is spent programming, in SAS
or Stata, to get variables in the proper working condition. Once
the data have been “cleaned” (i.e., missing values imputed or
deleted and variables put in a usable format), the more difficult
programming begins. For example, you may want to look at
22 Secondary Data Analysis

longitudinal data for children when they are between the ages of
0 to 4, examining their income, child care, health care, or other
variables, and different children may be ages 0 to 4 in different
waves of the data. To do this, you will need to use data loops and
arrays, with which you should be familiar before starting such a
project. Obviously, different software programs have different
programming languages (SAS, SPSS, Stata), and it will be helpful
to know how to program in at least one of the programming
languages.
9. How quickly do you need results?
If you are examining a new policy and need to determine if it is
helping or hurting, secondary data, if it’s available, may aid in
getting quicker results. Of course, the speed with which you can
generate an analysis depends on how well put together the
secondary data are and on your programming skills, as noted
above. The use of secondary data can save time and resources for
the researcher. Even more important, however, using existing
data bypasses the need to ask for time and a certain degree of
trust from new research participants who, by the purview of the
social work profession, are often among the most vulnerable.
If the data are not available, and quick results are needed,
collecting primary data may the best way to examine new
policies.
 4

Secondary Datasets

In this chapter, I will describe several social work, social science, and
related datasets, along with where and how to access them and their key
characteristics. Of course, there are thousands of secondary datasets
available in myriad places, and I will cover only a portion of the largest
and most widely used datasets. I will indicate where to find these data,
and, in some cases, the types of analyses that one can undertake using
them. I will also indicate whether datasets have public use versions,
which generally strip the data of geographic identifiers or other poten-
tially identifying information and which, in addition, have another ver-
sion that includes these identifiers. The datasets will be described by
various features, including:

1. Cross-sectional, longitudinal
2. Years covered
3. Unit of analysis
4. Sample size
5. Population(s) covered and
6. Basic categories of information covered

I also summarize much of this information in Appendix Tables 1 and 2.

One of the best places to find many of the datasets that will be
described here is the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social

23
24 Secondary Data Analysis

Research (ICPSR), the largest archive of social science datasets (http://

www.icpsr.umich.edu). There are not only original datasets in this col-
lection, but also datasets that have been assembled by other researchers.
For example, I recently needed the Current Population Survey (CPS)
from the 1960s to the present. The CPS website (http://www.census.gov/
cps/) contains data only from recent years. I went to the ICPSR and
found many of the supplements to the CPS (such as the Veterans
Supplement, the Food Security Supplement, and the Tobacco Use
Supplement), but also found the March, individual-level extracts from
1968 to 1992, which were put together by Robert Moffitt (Study Number
6171, http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cocoon/ICPSR/STUDY/06171.xml).
Thus, instead of having to put together each individual year of the CPS,
the ICPSR contained merged data that were ready to use. In looking for
the General Social Survey, I was able to find information about the
Japanese General Social Survey, the Chinese General Social Survey, and
the Polish General Social Survey, among many others. Many of these
datasets are ready for downloading, and many have been cleaned (e.g.,
putting in missing value codes for missing data, assembling data by
person, family, or household) by those putting them together.
The Data Ferret from the U.S. Census Bureau, located at http://
dataferrett.census.gov/, is another key source for obtaining data. The
data included from this website include the American Community
Survey; the American Housing Survey; the Consumer Expenditure
Survey; County Business Patterns; the Current Population Survey; the
Decennial Census of the Population and Housing; Decennial Public
Use Microdata Samples; the Mortality Sample; the National Ambulatory
Medical Care Survey; the National Health Interview Survey; the National
Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey,; the National Survey of
Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation; the New York City
Housing and Vacancy Survey; Small Area Health Insurance Estimates;
Small Areas Income and Poverty Estimates; The Social Security
Administration Survey of Income and Program Participation; and the
Survey of Program Dynamics. To get the Data Ferret program, go to the
web page given above, then click on “Launch DataFerrett.” You will
be asked for your e-mail address, which you will use when you log into
the system. Once you are in DataFerrett, you can choose any of the above
datasets and download the data in a variety of formats, create tables,
or create tables for downloading.
 Secondary Datasets 25

One more excellent site that I will often refer to in the book is the
Pennsylvania State Simple Online Data Archive for Population Studies
(SODA POP). There are hundreds of secondary datasets available at
this site (http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections), many of them
accessible to those outside of the Penn State system (see http://sodapop.
pop.psu.edu/help/sodapop-for-users-outside-of-penn-state for gaining
access to the datasets on this site). A truly nice aspect of this site is that
you can search all of the datasets by keyword (see http://sodapop.pop.
psu.edu/explore/codebooks/sodaforms/searchall_form.html). Thus, if
you are interested in mental health, you can type this phrase into their
search engine and it will show you all the variables and datasets that
contain that phrase (variables, labels, or anywhere else in the description
of the data/variables).
For educational datasets, an excellent archive is the International
Archive of Educational Data (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/IAED/index.
html). Here, you will find datasets and online tools to examine a wide
range of educational surveys.
Large secondary datasets not covered in this book are numerous, and
I will mention a few here that may be of interest to social work and other
social science researchers. One is the Combine study, which examines
treatment options for alcoholism; it included 1,383 alcohol-abstinent
volunteers and ran from 2001 to 2004 (Anton, 2006). Second, the
National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Data Resources Program is a reposi-
tory of datasets collected through NIJ-funded grants. These datasets are
archived in the National Archive of Crime Justice Data within the ICPSR.
A few of these datasets include the National Evaluation of the National
Institute of Justice Grants to Combat Violent Crimes Against Women on
Campus Program, 2000–2002; Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM)
Program in the United States, 2003; The National Crime Victimization
Survey, through 2008; and the National Crime Victimization Survey:
School Crime Supplement, 2007. Also, see Boslaugh (2007) for more
information on health-related datasets.
Most of the rest of this book goes into greater detail about all of the
secondary datasets previously mentioned. For some the datasets, I go
into where and how to access the data and, for some datasets, I show you
screen shots for using the data. I find that the screen shots are often help-
ful in seeing what the datasets look like to help users access or use the
data. Other datasets, in which less information is given on accessing or
26 Secondary Data Analysis

using the data, are fairly straightforward (download the data and start
working), or are so complicated that they would take up too much space
to present such information here. When codebooks or descriptions of
the data are available online, I indicate where you can find those descrip-
tions or codebooks. I sometimes give brief SAS code for using some of
the data as well, to give readers the feel for what to do when accessing and
using some of these data. I will often indicate which datasets are best for
particular types of research—such as the study of children, health, edu-
cation, poverty, intergenerational studies, etc.—often by presenting what
kinds of studies have come from these datasets. For some datasets,
response rates are easily available, and I indicate these response rates
when discussing the dataset, while for others, response rates could not be
found. I present the datasets in alphabetical order.

ADOPTION AND FOSTER CARE ANALYSIS AND REPORTING SYSTEM (AFCARS)

The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS)
collects case-specific data on all finalized adoptions and foster care place-
ments facilitated through state welfare agencies, or private organizations
contracted by public welfare agencies, in all 50 states, the District of
Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The children in the dataset range in age
from under 1 year through 20 years. Data is available from 1995 through
2005. Data collection became more efficient in 1998, meaning better
data was collected for more states. States submit data twice over the
course of a year that begins on October 1 and ends the following year on
September 30. The original purpose of AFCARS was to gather informa-
tion for state and federal level policy- and program-management uses
and to research the nature of adoption and foster care. The information
is cross-sectional.
States are federally mandated to provide this data on an annual basis
under Title IV-B/E of the Social Security Act (Section 427). The dataset
includes all cases of foster care and adoption that occur through public
welfare agencies. The dataset represents only those types of arrange-
ments. Agencies securing adoptions outside of state agencies provide
information voluntarily, and this information is not included in the
publicly available dataset.
 Secondary Datasets 27

The number of states reporting and number of observations vary

across years. In 2005, 52 states/districts reported data for both adoptions
and foster care, totaling 51,485 and 801,200 observations, respectively.
Efforts are made to remove duplicated adoption observations, but
beware of such duplication. The foster care data include only one obser-
vation per child; for those children with multiple observations, only the
most recent is included.
The dataset provides separate information on a variety of variables
for children who are adopted and those who are in foster care. The 37
adoption variables include child demographics, the presence of dis-
abilities (e.g., physical, mental retardation, visual/hearing impairment,
emotional disturbance), birth parents’ dates of birth and dates of termi-
nation of rights, date of adoption, adoptive family structure, adoptive
parents’ demographics and any pre-adoptive relationship to the child,
and information about the agency placing the child, as well as whether
the adoptive family is receiving Title IV-E support and if so, the amount.
The 66 foster care variables include child demographics, the presence
of disabilities, information about previous removals from home and
adoptions, manner of removal (e.g., voluntary or court ordered), reason
for removal (e.g., abuse/neglect, alcohol/drug abuse by parent or child,
child disability or behavior problems, parent death or incarceration,
abandonment), placement setting (e.g., pre-adoptive home, relative or
nonrelative foster home, group home), case plan goal (e.g., reunification
with parent, live with relatives, adoption, long-term foster care, emancipa-
tion, guardianship), information about the principal caretaker and foster
caretaker as well as the family structure of each, reasons for discharge from
foster care (e.g., reunification, living with other relatives, adoption, eman-
cipation), and use of state support. Foster care variables include whether
AFDC/TANF, SSI, and SS payments supported relative caretakers.
Researchers using AFCARS data can study case-level data at a state or
national level and examine descriptive data about children and their
birth, adoptive and foster parents; placement types, lengths and goals;
and the amount and impact of social assistance. Researchers also can
examine trends and predictors of a variety of foster care and adoption
outcomes. The dataset allows for policy analysis, given that one can study
and compare data across states. Each annual dataset includes state-
specific notes that inform this type of analysis.
28 Secondary Data Analysis

Annually, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

publishes The AFCARS Report, outlining descriptive information about
children in foster care, waiting for adoption and adopted. This report is
available through http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb, the Children’s
Bureau web page. Other researchers recently have used AFCARS to study
trends in kinship care (Vericker, Macomber & Geen, 2008), the factors
that influence foster care discharge rates after termination of parental
rights (Smith, 2003), predictors of reunification for foster children with
an incarcerated parent (Hayward and DePanfilis, 2007), and the relation-
ship between child developmental and medical conditions on out-of-
home placement (Rosenberg & Robinson, 2004). Another researcher used
AFCARS to examine the impact of subsidies on adoption (Hansen, 2007).
These data are available from National Data Archive of Child Abuse
and Neglect (NDACAN), http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu. The codebook
for the 1995 to 1999 versions of the data is available at http://www.
ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/AFCARS_
Guide_1995-1999.pdf.

CHILD NEGLECT: CROSS SECTOR SERVICE PATH AND OUTCOMES

Child Neglect: Cross Sector Service Path and Outcomes uses administrative
and census data to gather longitudinal, child-level information about
cross-sector service use and patterns, caregiver characteristics, and later
child and adolescent outcomes. The sample comprises those receiving
AFDC or TANF, with approximately half the sample including children
with reports to child welfare for maltreatment and half without such
reports. All children in the sample were born between 1982 and 1994,
were under 12 years old when data collection began, and lived with a
family that received AFDC. Data collection began in 1993 to 1994 and
followed the children through 2001. Samples were drawn and data col-
lected for a Midwestern metropolitan area. It is unclear whether the data
are representative of children in this region or of any other groups.
Child Neglect uses a matched, two-group comparison design. The
researchers first created a sample of children who had been reported to
child welfare services for maltreatment in 1993 or 1994, and then
matched these children to AFDC records. These children constituted the
 Secondary Datasets 29

maltreatment/AFDC group. Maltreatment categories for this group

included neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or mixed types; emotional
abuse and other forms of maltreatment were excluded. The comparison
group, randomly selected from the remaining children in the AFDC files
and matched by birth year and city or county of residence, includes chil-
dren whose families were not reported to child welfare for maltreatment
in 1993 or 1994. Each group contains only one child per family, and the
AFDC-only group excludes those children who have a sibling, or who
live in a home with other children, with a report of maltreatment. The
total sample includes 10,187 children with 5,087 in the maltreatment/
AFDC group and 5,100 in the AFDC-only comparison group. Four age
cohorts were created in each sample and followed for the eight years of
data collection. This accelerated panel design allows for statistical analy-
sis of 19 years’ worth of developmental information, not just eight.
Child Neglect collects child-level data through administrative records
from education, health, juvenile and adult corrections, and social service
organizations. Some adult-level data are available on some variables.
Child abuse and neglect information includes age at time of the report,
reason for the report, relationship with the perpetrator, substantiation
status, type and severity of maltreatment, and occupation of the reporter.
Child welfare services data include information about foster care services
(e.g., age at entry, reasons for placement and exit, and type, frequency,
and length of placements) and in-home services, such as intensive family
preservation services and less intensive family services. Income-
maintenance variables include information about spells on AFDC or
TANF (starting in 1997) and reasons for receipt. Data is gathered on the
admission date and offense type for those who spent time in juvenile
justice facilities. Adult corrections data provide information about incar-
ceration in state facilities (not local or county jails), including admission
year, sentence length and offense (including property and financial
crimes or possession/selling of drugs). Medicaid billing information
includes data about inpatient, outpatient, and hospital care and prob-
lems at birth that may impact development later (collected from both the
mother’s and the child’s records). Educational data include disability
type and date of testing. Community-level data include 1990 residential
census tract data (e.g., population total, income, race, education, unem-
ployment and mobility) and crime information.
30 Secondary Data Analysis

Researchers can use Child Neglect: Cross Sector Service Path and
Outcomes to examine service utilization among children experiencing
abuse and neglect, the association between service utilization and later
outcomes, and the relationship between TANF use and child and adoles-
cent outcomes. This information can be compared with those receiving
AFDC or TANF but without maltreatment reports. Researchers have
explored the relationship between criminal justice system involvement
and welfare (Jonson-Reid, 2002) and maltreatment (Bright, Jonson-Reid
& Williams, 2008). Research has also examined the association between
maltreatment and special education eligibility (Jonson-Reid, Drake,
Kim, Porterfield, & Han, 2004) and risk of death (Jonson-Reid, Chance,
& Drake, 2007). Researchers also have used the dataset to explore possi-
bilities for improved technology to map referrals and services (Hovmand,
Jonson-Reid, & Drake, 2007).
These data are available through National Data Archive of Child
Abuse and Neglect, http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu, or see Http://www.
ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/Abstracts/DatasetAbstract_116.
html. The codebook for the data is available at http://www.ndacan.
cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/116user.pdf.

COMMON CORE OF DATA (CCD)

Common Core of Data, a database of public elementary and secondary
schools of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for
Education Statistics, annually collects fiscal and nonfiscal data about
students, staff, and characteristics of public schools; public school dis-
tricts; and state education agencies in the United States. The dataset pro-
vides an official listing of elementary and secondary schools and school
districts nationally and provides basic information and statistics on
schools in general. Unlike many datasets, the CCD actually covers an
entire national population (that of public elementary and secondary
schools/districts) rather than just a sample that is representative of that
population. Often, the CCD is used as a sample frame from which
random samples of schools or districts are selected as part of the data
collection process in other surveys.
The data is collected each year from a population of approximately
97,000 public elementary and secondary schools and approximately
 Secondary Datasets 31

18,000 public school districts. Data come from the 50 states, the District
of Columbia, Department of Defense schools, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, and outlying areas, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa,
and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The data is collected using five surveys sent
out to the state education departments and completed by agency offi-
cials. Most of the data are acquired through administrative records. The
data for schools and districts are meant to be comparable across states.
The CCD comprises five datasets: Public School Universe, Local
Education Agency (School District) Universe, state aggregate nonfiscal
data, state aggregate fiscal data, and school district fiscal data. The Public
School Universe includes information on the location and type of school,
enrollment by grade, student characteristics, and number of teachers.
The Local Education Agency (School District) Universe has information
on the number of current students and the number of high school gradu-
ates. The state aggregate nonfiscal dataset has information on students
and staff, such as the number of students per grade level and high school
graduates and completers. Both the state and school district aggregate
fiscal data include revenue and expenditures by function and average
daily attendance and enrollment, respectively.
The CCD includes variables pertaining to dropouts; the receipt of
diplomas and GEDs; guidance counselors and institutional aides; library
and library/media support; Individualized Education Programs for stu-
dents with disabilities; alternative education schools, charter schools,
magnet schools and programs; kindergarten and pre-kindergarten;
educational agencies (state, federal and other); migrant students; shared-
time schools; supervisory unions; and Title I eligible schools. The CCD
also includes information about schools’ participation in the Free Lunch
Program, Reduced-Price Lunch Program, and Head Start Program, and
geographical information, such as community size and whether the
school is located in a metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area.
The data are available through the National Center for Education
Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ccd). Researchers can build tables, search
for public schools, and compare the data across states. Data on private
schools also can be accessed through the NCES Private School Universe
Survey (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/).
The data can be assembled by state, county, school district, or
school—currently for 1987–1988 through 2006–2007—as shown in the
following page.
32 Secondary Data Analysis

From here, you can examine a limited number of variables by grade

level. You can also examine the most requested tables, such as grade
completers by race and pupil-to-teacher ratios.
A second way to access the data on this site is by downloading entire
datasets, with either SAS or SPSS code, or an SAS dataset. Data docu-
mentation also is available for download (http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/bat/
versions.asp).The download page looks like the figure given in the fol-
lowing page for the local education agency (school district) survey.
From here, click on the 2006–07 SAS zip file, and agree to the terms
of use. The file downloads in SAS format (instead of a flat file that would
require either SAS or SPSS code to transform the data into SAS or SPSS).
From here, the data was put into the c:\SAS directory. Next, go into SAS,
and write the code:
libname in ‘c:\SAS’;
data a;set in.ag061c;
proc means n mean std;
run;

You then get the result as shown in Table 4.1.

For a second dataset, the State Dropout and Completion Data
File: 2005–06, this dataset was again downloaded in SAS format, and the
 Secondary Datasets 33

sample sizes and mean values as seen in Table 4.2 were obtained for a
variety of variables.
Similar downloads are available for Census 2000 School District
Demographics, Local Education Agency (school district) Universe
Survey Dropout and Completion Data, National Public Education
Financial Survey (State Fiscal), Public Elementary/Secondary School
Universe Survey, State Nonfiscal Public Elementary/Secondary Education
Survey, State-Level Public School Dropout Data, and Survey of Local
Government Finances, School Systems. Codebooks for many of these
datasets, as well as data downloads, are available from The Pennsylvania
State University at http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/ccd/dnd.
34 Secondary Data Analysis

Table 4.1 The SAS System The MEANS Procedure

Variable Label N Mean Std Dev
LATCOD06 Latitude 18208 39.7733226 4.6435224
LONCOD06 Longitude 18208 -91.5740790 14.9207493
SCH06 Aggregate 18250 5.4871233 18.8966628
Number of
Schools
Associated with
Agency
TEACH06 Aggregate FTE 18250 106.7183507 423.0605554
Classroom
Teachers
Associated with
Agency
UG06 Ungraded 18250 14.5500274 234.5235417
Students
PK1206 PK - 12 Students 18250 2713.36 11302.61
MEMBER06 Calculated Total 18250 2729.48 11365.55
Student
Membership of
the LEA
MIGRNT06 Migrant Students 18250 0.3923836 28.2065423
Served in a
Summer Program
SPECED06 Special Education 18250 348.0399452 1950.14
- Individualized
Education
Program (IEP)
Students
ELL06 English Language 18250 137.6566575 1210.67
Learner Students
PKTCH06 Teachers - 18250 2.0001425 16.1675356
Prekindergarten
KGTCH06 Teachers - 18250 9.3033534 50.7920183
Kindergarten
ELMTCH06 Teachers - 80.7286466 407.9800449
Elementary
v18250
SECTCH06 Teachers - 18250 69.1956110 305.0761105
Secondary
UGTCH06 Teachers - 18250 12.5189315 112.6576929
Ungraded
TOTTCH06 Teachers - Total 18250 174.7794521 855.8791411
 Secondary Datasets 35

Table 4.1 The SAS System The MEANS Procedure (Continued)

Variable Label N Mean Std Dev
AIDES06 Instructional 18250 33.1789041 138.3939312
Aides /
Paraprofessionals
CORSUP06 Instructional 18250 3.3155945 24.7923206
Coordinators and
ELMGUI06 Guidance 18250 1.2131836 8.1638505
Counselors -
Elementary
SECGUI06 Guidance 18250 2.0418630 11.9331475
Counselors -
Secondary
TOTGUI06 Guidance 18250 5.5707233 28.7885990
Counselors -
Total
LIBSPE06 Librarians / 18250 2.9306521 14.1227927
Media Specialists
LIBSUP06 Librarians / 18250 1.2083233 7.4469987
Media Support
Staff
LEAADM06 LEA 18250 3.1864877 15.3907534
Administrators
LEASUP06 LEA 18250 8.5664274 42.7661939
Administrative
Support Staff
SCHADM06 School 18250 8.4452164 41.6789161
Administrators
SCHSUP06 School 18250 12.1865425 71.1972492
Administrative
Support Staff
STUSUP06 Student Support 18250 13.1183507 65.3746717
Services Staff
OTHSUP06 All Other Support 18250 57.4597151 276.0275388
Staff

CONTINUING SURVEY OF FOOD INTAKE BY INDIVIDUALS (CSFII)

The Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals (CSFII), con-
ducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, aims to study the
food-consumption patterns of the people of the United States, with a
particular emphasis on the effects of nutritional policies, exposure
36 Secondary Data Analysis

Table 4.2
Variable Label N Mean
RP912 Dropout Rate (Grades 9 through 12) 59 3.3661017
P9 Dropout Rate (Grade 9) 59 2.6237288
DRP10 Dropout Rate (Grade 10) 59 3.1271186
DRP11 Dropout Rate (Grade 11) 59 3.5745763
DRP12 Dropout Rate (Grade 12) 59 4.3711864
DRPAM Dropout Rate (American Indian / Alaskan 59 4.7915254
Native, Grades 9 through 12)
DRPAS Dropout Rate (Asian / Pacific Islander, 59 1.9169492
Grades 9 through 12)
DRPHI Dropout Rate (Hispanic, Grades 9 59 4.7440678
through 12)
DRPBL Dropout Rate (Black, non-Hispanic, Grades 59 4.3474576
9 through 12)
DRPWH Dropout Rate (White, non-Hispanic, 59 1.9576271
Grades 9 through 12)
DRPM Dropout Rate (Male, Grades 9 through 12) 59 2.9661017
DRPF Dropout Rate (Female, Grades 9 59 2.2864407
through 12)
DRPU Dropout Rate (Gender Unknown, Grades 9 59 1.7457627
through 12)
EBS912 Dropout Rate Enrollment Base (Grades 9 59 239668.68
through 12)
EBS9 Dropout Rate Enrollment Base (Grade 9) 59 69354.90
EBSAM9M Dropout Rate Enrollment Base (American 59 377.6949153
Indian / Alaskan Native, Grade 9, Male)
EBSAM9F Dropout Rate Enrollment Base (American 59 365.4745763
Indian / Alaskan Native, Grade 9, Female)
EBSAM9U Dropout Rate Enrollment Base (American 59 0.1525424
Indian / Alaskan Native, Grade 9, Gender
Unknown)
EBSAS9M Dropout Rate Enrollment Base (Asian / 59 1508.88
Pacific Islander, Grade 9, Male)

to pesticides, and the influence of diet on various health problems.

The original study was conducted in 1985 and 1986, with continuations
and changes in 1989–1991, 1994–1996, and 1998. The samples are
nationally representative.
The 1985 and 1986 data included both an all-income sample and a
low-income sample (see http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?
 Secondary Datasets 37

docid=7889). The all-income sample included 1,500 women aged 19 to

50 and their children, aged 1 to 5 (with around 550 children in each
sample year), and a sample of 1,100 men, aged 19 to 50, in the 1985
sample only. The low-income sample had 2,100 and 1,300 women and
1,300 and 800 children in 1985 and 1986, respectively. Food intake was
collected for six days, over a one-year period, for each year.
The 1989–1991 study was conducted as three separate one-year sur-
veys with data collected over three consecutive days, with an aim to pro-
vide information on the usual intake of foods and nutrients. The first day
was an in-home interview in which respondents recalled the food con-
sumed the previous day. The second and third days’ data were collected
through a self-administered dietary recall. Six weeks after the three-day
data collection period, respondents completed the Diet and Health
Knowledge Survey. Sample sizes are relatively large, with 15,192 indi-
viduals for the one-day dietary intake, and 11,912 for the three-day
dietary in-take.
The 1994–1996 continuation, which again aimed to find the “usual
intake” of food per individual, collected one-day dietary intake data from
16,103 persons of all ages, 4,253 of whom were children aged 0 to 9 years
old. Respondents provided details about their food intake in the past
24 hours, reporting on the specific types of food consumed and the
amount of each food consumed. To improve efficiency and minimize
error, a computerized coding system (Survey Net) converted food intake
into its component foods and nutrients.
The 1998 continuation, called the Supplemental Children’s Survey,
CSFII 1998, collected data from a larger sample of children (N=5,559) to
estimate the exposure to pesticide residues in the diets of children. CSFII
1998 data can be combined with 1994–1996 data. The Department of
Agriculture, through the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, required
the collection of this data.
The CSFII contains variables relating to health and diet such as nutri-
ent, vitamin, and supplement intake; dietary fiber; niacin and calcium
equivalents; folate content; source frequency of food and beverage intake;
household food; identity of the main food preparer; breast-fed children;
school and employment of household members over 15 years of age;
family income, both absolute and as a percentage of the poverty level;
and region and size of the area (metropolitan vs. nonmetropolitan area)
of the respondent.
38 Secondary Data Analysis

The CSFII data have been used to study many aspects of food intake.
Dietary studies involving CSFII data have looked at the relationship
between healthy diets and family income (Beydoun, Powell, & Wang,
2009), how demographics affect diet quality (Forshee & Storey, 2006),
and the correlation between self-assessed health status and diet intake
(Goodwin, Knol, Eddy, & Fitzhugh, 2006). The topic of food intake also
has been studied for specific ages, from preschool (Kranz, Hartman,
Siega-Riz, & Herring, 2006), to school-aged children (Suitor & Gleason,
2002) to the elderly (Sebastian, Cleveland, Goldman, & Moshfegh, 2007).
Other research has studied the relationship between gender and ethnicity
and diet (Beydoun & Wang, 2008); the links among nutrition, food secu-
rity, and obesity (Beebout, 2006); the relationship between school meal
participation and nutrient intake (Gleason & Suitor 2003); and calcium
requirements (Hunt & Johnson, 2007).
The 1989-1991 CSFII data are available from National Technical
Information Service, http://www.ntis.gov. The 1994–1996 and 1998
data and documentation are available at The Pennsylvania State
University through Simple Online Data Archive of Population Studies
at http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/csfii/dnd, and from the
Department of Agriculture (http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/
Place/12355000/pdf/Csfii98.pdf) on CD-ROM.

CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY (CPS)

The Current Population Survey has been conducted as a joint effort
between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Census since
the 1940s. The purpose of the CPS is to provide information on charac-
teristics of the labor force in the United States. It is often used to evaluate
the number and percentage of unemployed and to measure the potential
labor force. It also is used to calculate and analyze wage rates, hours of
work, and earning trends for different demographic groups. The study is
nationally representative of the civilian noninstitutionalized population.
The data can be used to look at the country as a whole and sometimes can
be used to examine states or other geographic areas, depending on the
sample size of those states.
The CPS collects cross-sectional monthly data from around 50,000 to
100,000 households. Each member of the household aged 16 and above
 Secondary Datasets 39

is interviewed. Data is collected by either in-person or telephone inter-

views. General labor force information is collected each month, and
other data on specialized topics are gathered through periodic additional
supplements. Each household is a participant in the survey for eight
survey periods. When it first enters the survey, it is involved in four con-
secutive monthly surveys, then it is absent from the next eight, and then
it partakes again in another four months.
Outside of employment numbers, the CPS provides data on demo-
graphics, displaced workers, computer and internet use, educational
attainment, industry, occupation, marital status, minimum wage work,
poverty, volunteering, women’s employment, and youth employment.
The survey was redesigned in 1994 to take into account changing pat-
terns of life in the United States. The redesign was implemented to collect
more monthly data on earnings and hourly wages, child care problems,
and problems associated with being laid off.
The March Supplement to the CPS, the Annual Social and Economic
Supplement, gives data on income, poverty, and health insurance for the
country. Tables for this information are available at the U.S. Census web
page, and downloads of these data are available at http://www.bls.census.
gov/cps_ftp.html#cpsmarch for 1998 to 2008. Other data in this March
Supplement include region, state, principal city, city size, rental subsi-
dies, receipt of food stamps and other government assistance, unearned
income, taxes paid, family type, income percentile, disability status
and disability income, reasons for missing work, type of worker, involve-
ment in worker training, type of health insurance, health status, and rea-
sons for receiving Social Security income or Supplemental Security
Income. All of this information is available at the household, family, and
individual levels. Note that the public CPS does not include tax informa-
tion (and thus no information is given on the earned income tax credit
or taxes paid). It also does not include capital gains income. Also note
that roughly the top 6 % of income is top coded, meaning that good
estimates cannot be made of the top income earners in the country.
Internal versions of the CPS that do not contain these top codes are
available for researchers willing to work on site (check with the U.S.
Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies for location, at http://www.
ces.census.gov).
The CPS data are used by researchers in studies on a variety of sub-
jects. Topics include labor, in which studies have been conducted on
40 Secondary Data Analysis

union membership and coverage (Hirsch & Macpherson, 2003), job sta-
bility (Jaeger & Stevens, 1999), minimum wage (Burkhauser, Couch, &
Wittenberg, 2000), and the labor market skills of recent male immigrants
(Funkhouser and Trejo, 1995). The CPS also has been used to provide
estimates of adult cigarette smoking by state and region (Shopland,
Hartman, Gibson, Mueller, Kessler, & Lynn, 1996), income inequality
and health status (Burkhauser, Fend, & Larrimore, 2008; Mellor & Milyo,
2002), expectations of work for single mothers (Burkhauser, Daly,
Larrimore, & Kwok, 2008), and child support from maritally disrupted
men (Cherlin, Griffith, & McCarthy, 1983).
CPS data can be found at the National Bureau of Economic Research
(NBER) website http://www.nber.org/data/cps_basic.html and at The
Pennsylvania State University Simple Online Data Archive for Population
Studies (SODA POP) at http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/
cps/dnd, where codebooks for the data also are available. Basic monthly
data and supplements are available in SAS, SPSS, and Stata data files.
Basic monthly data, however, are available only from 1976 to the present,
and supplemental data are available only for 1964 to the present.
Data also can be found at the ICPSR, and a number of people have
created datasets that include the March Supplement to the CPS from
the 1960s to the 1990s. Data Ferret also has all data from the CPS for
all months from January 1994 to the present. The variables are well-
organized on the Data Ferret web site, so that you can download infor-
mation on many topical areas, including food security (1995–2007),
fertility (1998 –2008), Internet (1994 –2007) and library use (2002), and
work schedules (1997–2004). The Data Ferret screen for the CPS looks
like the figure shown in the following page.
From here, you can click on any of the CPS datasets, view the vari-
ables for any of the years available, and then choose the variables for
downloading by putting them into your data basket. You would then go
to Step 2, at the top of the page, and either download them or make a
table that can be downloaded. If you are downloading the data (and not
the tables), you can do so in all of the popular statistical packages.

DEVELOPMENTAL VICTIMIZATION SURVEY

The Developmental Victimization Survey (DVS) is a longitudinal study
that collects data about children’s experiences with victimization and
 Secondary Datasets 41

adversity, children’s mental health and delinquent behaviors, and child,

parent, and household characteristics and demographics. The Crimes
Against Children Research Center conducted the research with funding
from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention. The dataset includes information about 2,030
children aged 2 to 17 years, collected in 2002–2003 and again in 2003–
2004 (N=1,467). The study uses the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire
to collect victimization information as well as the Trauma Symptom
Checklist for Children (TSCC) and Trauma Symptom Checklist for
Young Children (TSCYC) for other variables of interest.
The data are nationally representative for children aged 2 to 17 living
in the contiguous United States. The data has been weighted to account
for the number of eligible children in each household and the undersam-
pling of Black and Hispanic children, and to make the sample equal to
the national child population. These weights are based on July 2002
census data.
Researchers collected data during telephone interviews, using list-
assisted, random-digit dialing to select participants, with 70% of those
eligible agreeing to participate. Caregivers, usually the parents, provided
42 Secondary Data Analysis

family demographic information. Researchers selected a sample child

from all children in the household by selecting the child with the most
recent birthday. If that child was under 10 years old, the researchers
interviewed the caregiver or parent most familiar with the child’s daily
routines, using a caregiver version of the survey. If the child was between
10 and 17 years of age, the researcher interviewed the child.
The DVS contains a variety of variables related to child health,
victimization, child behavior, and parental, household and neighbor-
hood characteristics. Child health variables include the presence and age
of diagnosis for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, attention
deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD), oppositional/defiant disorder (ODD) or conduct disorder,
autism, developmental delay or retardation, depression, and learning
disorders. The survey also provides data on the presence of certain
emotions and related behaviors, such as sadness, fear, worry, anger, the
feeling that one is hated or disliked, aggressiveness, tantruming, crying,
daydreaming, and absentmindedness, in addition to such attitudes or
behaviors as calling someone bad, throwing things, wanting to hurt self
or wishing for death, and hurting, arguing, or yelling at others. Variables
also provide information about participation in counseling or therapy.
DVS collects information about five types of victimization experi-
enced by children using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVC).
The five categories and the suboffenses include (a) conventional crime
(e.g., robbery, personal theft, vandalism and assault); (b) child maltreat-
ment (e.g., physical abuse, psychological/emotional abuse, neglect and
custodial interference/family abduction); (c) peer and sibling victimiza-
tion (e.g., gang or group assault, assault, bullying, and dating violence);
(d) sexual victimization (e.g., sexual assault, rape, flashing/sexual
exposure, verbal sexual harassment, and statutory rape and sexual mis-
conduct) and (e) witnessing violence and indirect victimization (e.g.,
witnessing domestic violence, assault, burglary, murder, and shooting).
Additional victimization variables include sexual or pornographic photos
of child (dropped from the revised JVC), experiences and concern for
other adverse life events (e.g., kidnapping, natural disasters, bad acci-
dents, incarcerated parents), and exposure to media violence and subse-
quent impact (e.g., exposure to the 9/11 attacks and the DC sniper
shootings). Behavioral variables include information about delinquency,
 Secondary Datasets 43

school, and leisure behaviors. The dataset includes data on 17 delin-

quency behaviors during the past year, including such variables as break-
ing things, hitting, stealing, cheating, skipping school, graffiti, loudness,
weapon possession, not paying for things, drinking, smoking and using
drugs. The DVS also collects information about a child’s school attitudes
and behaviors, such as whether the child likes school, how often she talks
with a parent about school, her grades, special services received at school,
involvement in sports or clubs, homework, after-school care, transporta-
tion home from school, and where she spends time when in school. If the
child attends day care, variables include the type of caregiver and hours
spent with someone other than the parent or relative in the home.
Parental variables include status of the parents in the household
relative to the child, such as adoptive father, stepfather, biological
mother, adoptive mother, stepmother, mother’s unmarried partner (not
a parent to child), father’s unmarried partner (not a parent to child),
and the age at which the child stopped living with her biological family
(if applicable).
Parental, household and neighborhood characteristics provide
information about the environments in which the child resides. Parental
characteristics provide data on their warmth, supervision and criticism
of their child, communication activities, and knowledge about the child’s
activities and friends. Household variables include income and public
assistance receipt (including TANF, Women Infants and Children [WIC]
program, SSI, and SS), exposure to illegal drugs, marital status of paren-
tal respondent, household roster, living arrangements of child (e.g., with
adoptive or biological family), caregiving information, and experiences
with such events as homelessness, removal from the home, and parental
incarceration. Neighborhood variables include the degree to which
school, neighborhood, and town/city violence is a problem.
The DVS dataset makes it possible to look at both risk factors and
outcomes of childhood victimization, adversity, and exposure to vio-
lence. Given the array of variables, researchers can control for child,
parent, or household characteristics that may contribute to similar health
and behavior outcomes to isolate the victimization experience. The data
enable the researcher to study specific individual victimizations or
multiple victimizations treated separately or together. The Juvenile
Victimization Questionnaire was designed to use the same offense
44 Secondary Data Analysis

categories as the National Crime Victimization survey so that DVS data

can be compared with other crime statistics.
Researchers have used the DVS to study polyvictimization (Finkelhor,
Ormrod, Turner, & Hamby, 2005) as well as the relationship between
victimization and delinquency (Cuevas, Finkelhor, Turner, & Ormrod,
2007), polyvictimization and trauma symptoms (Finkelhor, Ormrod, &
Turner, 2007) and family structure and victimization (Turner, Finkelhor,
& Ormrod, 2007). Other studies provide information about differences
across ages in number and forms of violence (Finkelhor, Ormrod, &
Turner, 2008; Finkelhor, Ormrod, Turner, & Hamby, 2005) and in the
nature and impact of peer and sibling violence (Finkelhor, Turner, &
Ormrod, 2006). Researchers have also studied revictimization risk pat-
terns (Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2007), sociodemographic variation
in exposure to violence (Turner, Finkelhor, & Ormrod, 2006) and vic-
timization as a predictor of children’s mental health (Turner, Finkelhor,
& Ormrod, 2006).
Data from the 2002–2003 wave are available through the National
Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (http://www.ndacan.
cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets_List.html). The codebook for the
DVS is available at http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/Ndacan/Datasets/
UserGuidePDFs/126user.pdf.

EARLY CHILDHOOD LONGITUDINAL SURVEY

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS) consists of three lon-
gitudinal studies that gather data on children’s early life experiences;
cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development; home and school
environments; school readiness; and pre-school and school experiences.
The three studies include one birth and two overlapping school-age
cohorts: the birth cohort (ECLS-B), the kindergarten class of 1998–1999
(ECLS-K), and the kindergarten class of 2010–2011 (ECLS-K:2011).
Children, parents, child care providers, teachers, and school administra-
tors provide data. Fathers also respond about their relationships with
their children. The ECLS allows researchers to study how family, school,
community, and individual factors affect school performance and how
early childhood experiences affect later developments.
 Secondary Datasets 45

All of the ECLS samples are nationally representative. The birth

cohort is representative of children born in 2001, whereas the
kindergarten cohorts of 1998–1999 and 2010–2011 are representative
of kindergarten children attending public and private, full- and partial-
day kindergarten during the respective sampling year. In total, 19,173
children participated in the study, and 1,277 schools were asked to
participate. Of these 1,277 schools, 74% agreed to participate. There
was a 64% response rate from the children. The study used data from
children of varied socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds
and oversampled Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian, Alaska
Native, and Chinese children; twins; and children with low and very low
birthweight.
Data is collected in a variety of ways. The information from the
ECLS-B and the ECLS-K was obtained through interviews of the sample
members’ parents and school administrators, teacher questionnaires,
and observation of children’s participation in one-on-one assessment
activities. An English proficiency screener was used for English as a
Second Language (ESL) students. The birth cohort also involved a socio-
emotional direct assessment, which was carried out by videotaping the
child with her parent.
The birth cohort followed children from birth through kindergarten
and includes 14,000 children. Data were collected when the children
were 9 months old (N=approximately 10,700), 2 years old (2003,
N=approximately 9,800), pre-school age (2005, N=approximately
8,900), and age-eligible for kindergarten (2006 and 2007). The birth
cohort dataset contains variables relating to the child’s health, such as
height, weight, and body mass index; general mental ability; fine and
gross motor skills; behaviors such as attentiveness and social engage-
ment; attachment to parent; language and literacy development (and
related parental behaviors to promote such development); math skills;
color knowledge; and education during the years from birth to kinder-
garten. Community support variables include frequency of visiting with
neighbors and receiving community mental help services. Families
report receipt of public assistance, such as Food Stamps, WIC, and
TANF; they are also asked about periods of food insecurity. A variety
of self-reported mental and emotional health questions are asked of
parents. Different variables are collected at different ages.
46 Secondary Data Analysis

The kindergarten class of 1998–1999 followed children from

kindergarten through grade 8. Data collection points included kinder-
garten (1998-1999) and Grade 1 (1999–2000), and the springs of
Grades 3 (2002), 5 (2004) and 8 (2007). This survey collects data on
children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development,
and home environment and school characteristics. Specific questions
are asked in the eighth-grade survey about the child’s height
and weight and the child’s feelings about these, amount of exercise,
physical education classes taken, availability of certain types of food
in school, and the purchasing of food in school, including soda and
vegetables. School administrators are asked about characteristics of
the school, including percent of students by race; participation in
school breakfast and lunch programs; academic options for students;
problems with drugs, crime, and racial tensions; and the involvement of
parents in academic and nonacademic activities. The kindergarten class
of 2010–2011 cohort will follow students from kindergarten through
Grade 5.
The two kindergarten cohorts are able to track children from kinder-
garten during different policy environments, to see how policy changes
affect outcomes. Thus, changes in policy, such as the No Child Left
Behind Act and expansions in school choice, will allow researchers to see
how these policy actions affect child-related outcomes http://nces.ed.
gov/ECLS/comparisons2010.asp).
The data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey have been
used to study different health factors, such as overweight (Judge & Jahns,
2007), depression and mental health (Huang, Wong, Ronzio, & Yu,
2006), birth complications (Beaver & Wright, 2005), and nutrition
(Jacknowitz, Novillo, & Tiehen, 2007). Several research studies have
examined the effects of race, such as the effects of racial identification
(Brunsma, 2005), segregation, (Reardon, Yun, & Kurlaender, 2006), the
effects of racial and ethnic diversity on birthweight (Teitler, Reichman,
Nepomnyaschy, & Martinson, 2007), and the impact of computer tech-
nology on African American children (Judge, 2005). Other studies have
examined kindergarten variables, such as the effects of delayed starts
(Datar, 2006), the effects of class size (Milesi & Gamoran, 2006),
and effects of full-day versus half-day kindergarten (DeCica, 2007).
Also, research has been done using ECLS data pertaining to income,
 Secondary Datasets 47

particularly the relationship of material hardship and parenting and

child development (Gershoff, Aber, Raver, & Lennon, 2007), food inse-
curity and hunger and their effect on learning in the classroom (Winicki
& Jemison, 2003), religion (Bartkowski, Xu, & Levin, 2007), physical
activity (Carlson, Fulton, Lee, Maynard, Brown, Kohl, & Dietz, 2008;
Beets & Foley, 2008), inequality in cognitive skills and academic achieve-
ment (Downey, von Hippel, & Broh, 2004; Foster & Miller, 2007), and
special needs (Park, Hogan, & D’Ottavi, 2005).
Data are available from the National Center for Education Statistics
(www.nces.ed.gov). More specifically, the data and codebooks can be
found at http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/dataproducts.asp. Some of these data are
also available at the International Archive of Education Data (IAED)
(http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/IAED/studies.html), including the kinder-
garten class of 1998–99 and the original kindergarten class in third grade.
You can do simple analyses of these data at the IAED site. Some data are
available for public use, and other data require a data license. Some data,
primarily the birth cohort data, are available through Data Analysis
System (DAS) for statistical analysis online.
Below, I use the Survey Document and Analysis system to examine
some cross tabulations for the third-grade class, for the variables captur-
ing “litter near the school” and “attentive teachers in school.”
48 Secondary Data Analysis

And get the following results.

As you can see from the first table, more elaborate statistics can be
derived using this system than what are given here, but the scope of these
analyses is very limited. By downloading the entire datasets, you can
better control the variables and use them for more sophisticated analy-
ses. Below, the data for the kindergarten base and kindergarten-third
grade sample were downloaded, and SAS was used to merge the two files
together. SAS variable definitions are given when downloading both
datasets, but the user must supply the location and filename of the data,
which are given below. Both SAS files are very large, and only the top of
the data statement for both datasets below are given.
data a;
infile ‘c\10326250\ICPSR_04075\DS0001\
04075-0001-Data.txt’ lrecl=5798 n=2
missover pad;
input
#1
@1 CHILDID $8.
@9 PARENTID $8.
Run;
 Secondary Datasets 49

data b;
infile ‘c:\10326273\ICPSR_03676\DS0001\
03676-0001-Data.txt’ lrecl=5250 n=3;
input
#1
@1 CHILDID $8.
@9 PARENTID $8.

Run;

data c;merge a b;by childid;

run;

NOTE: There were 15305 observations read from the dataset WORK.A.
NOTE: There were 17212 observations read from the dataset WORK.B.
NOTE: The dataset WORK.C has 17707 observations and 8848 variables.

Data c gives you the merged dataset of the two waves of data.

FRAGILE FAMILIES AND CHILD WELL-BEING STUDY (FFCWS)

The Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFCWS), a longitudi-
nal study, gathers demographic, relationship, health, well-being, and
parental capacity data on non-marital couples, facilitating examination
of how these factors, as well as contextual and environmental conditions,
affect their children. Particular attention is paid to fathers. To date, the
study has followed couples and their children over a nine-year period,
with initial interviews occurring between February 1998 and September
2000. The initial interviews involved each parent and were conducted in
the hospital within 24 hours of the child’s birth. Subsequent interviews
occurred when the children were 1, 3, and 5 years old. A nine-year
follow-up was conducted between the summer of 2007 and the end of
2009, incorporating the core study, an in-home study, and a teacher
study. The survey includes data collected through parental interviews,
in-home interviews, and collaborative studies using administrative
records, in-depth qualitative interviews, and surveys.
Data were collected from 4,898 families, including 3,712 unmarried
couples and 1,186 married couples, from 20 U.S. cities with populations
over 200,000. The sample sizes for the follow-up years are: 4,270 mothers
50 Secondary Data Analysis

of whom 1,029 were married and 3,241 were unmarried at the time of
birth (one year); 4,140 mothers of whom 1,012 were married and 3,128
were unmarried (three year); and 4,055 mothers of whom 975 were mar-
ried and 3,080 were unmarried (five year). Approximately half the sample
is non-Hispanic Black and a third is Hispanic. National weights make the
data of 16 of the 20 cities representative of nonmarital births in U.S. cities
with populations over 200,000. City weights can be applied to make the
data representative of the sample cities, an option that may be of particu-
lar benefit to those wishing to examine conditions in cities that were stra-
tegically sampled so as to maximize variability in economic and policy
conditions.
Parental interviews gathered information on attitudes, relationships,
parenting behavior, demographic characteristics, mental and physical
health, economic and employment status, neighborhood characteristics,
and program participation. The mother’s questionnaire included far
more comprehensive birth father data than are available in most other
data sets, which allows for comparisons of fathers’ perceptions of their
roles and relationships and mothers’ perceptions of the same. The
in-home interview gathered information on children’s cognitive and
emotional development, health, and home environment. Studies devel-
oped in collaboration with the FFCWS provide additional information
on parents’ medical, employment, and incarceration histories; religion;
child care; and early childhood education.
The mother and father datasets contain 333 and 338 variables,
respectively. The FFCWS covers numerous variables including: parental
sexual activity; contact with Child Protective Services regarding sexual
abuse; incarceration; home environment; neighborhood information;
foster care; disability status of parent(s) and/or children; government
program participation; and health insurance coverage. The FFCWS also
takes into consideration forms of intimate and partner violence, includ-
ing whether a mother ever reported any abuse; whether either the father
or the mother is or has been incarcerated due to domestic violence;
whether parents ever witnessed violence, including murder; whether
either parent has reported being a victim of violence; and whether vio-
lence was cited as a reason for a mother and a father not living together,
not being married, or a reason for ending a relationship.
The FFCWS provides extensive information on alcohol and drug
abuse, including whether the biological mother drank and/or used drugs
 Secondary Datasets 51

during her pregnancy; whether the father was unable to find and main-
tain a job or friends due to alcohol or drugs; whether help was sought for
drug and alcohol problems; the number of alcoholic beverages con-
sumed or drugs used in one month; the problems associated with alcohol
or illegal drug use; the presence of emotional and psychological prob-
lems due to alcohol or drugs; the dangerous situations that arose because
of alcohol and drug abuse; the use of therapy for alcohol or drug prob-
lems; the dependence on drugs and alcohol; the relationship problems
due to alcohol or drugs; the incarceration of the father; and the father’s
and/or mother’s absence in the child’s life because of alcohol or drug
issues.
The FFCWS provides information on the presence of mental health
issues for the father and mother, regular medications taken, limitations
on work, and mental retardation or developmental delay in the child.
The data contain information about foster care, including whether
the child spent brief and/or extended separations from the parents with
foster parents; whether the mother or father know or are related to the
foster parents; or whether the child usually lives with foster parents. There
is also information on injuries the child sustained with foster parents.
Princeton University’s Bendheim-Thomas Center for Research on
Child Wellbeing and Columbia University’s Social Indicators Survey
Center conducted the FFCWS. Most of the data have been released for
public use. To protect respondent identity, however, data with geo-
graphic identifiers and medical records are released only through a
restricted-use contract. Access to Fragile Families contract data is limited
to faculty and research personnel at institutions with an Institutional
Review Board/ Human Studies Review Committee, which must be regis-
tered with either the U.S. Office for Human Research Protections
(OHRP) or the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Research involving the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study
data covers a variety of topics. These data have been used to examine
health topics such as obesity (Whitaker, Phillips, Orzol, & Burdette,
2007), depression (Whitaker, Orzol, & Kahn, 2007; Whitaker, Phillips, &
Orzol, 2006; Rees & Sabia, 2007), low birth weight (Reichman, Hamilton,
Hummer, & Padilla, 2008; Nepomnyaschy & Reichman, 2007), newborn
complications (Smulian, Teitler, Nepomnyaschy, Ananth, & Reichman,
2005), and health insurance and utilization of healthcare (Hamilton,
Hummer, You, & Padilla, 2006). Other studies have examined the effects
52 Secondary Data Analysis

of domestic violence (Burke, Lee, & O’Campo, 2008), acculturation

(Kimbro, Lynch, & McLanahan, 2008), religion (Petts, 2007), and house-
hold monetary inequality (Kenney, 2006). Numerous studies look at the
effects of father involvement (Percheski & Wildeman, 2008; Carlson,
McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008; Lewis, Garfinkel, & Gao, 2007),
as well as a number of outcomes by family structure, especially for those
who are unmarried parents (Gibson-Davis, 2008; Gibson-Davis, Edin, &
McLanahan, 2005; Heiland, Liu, 2006; Kenney, 2004; Sigle-Rushton &
McLanahan, 2002; Edin & Reed, 2005; Curits, 2007), and the effects of
neighborhoods (Burdette & Whitaker, 2005; Burdette, Wadden, &
Whitaker, 2006; Casciano, 2007; Casciano & Massey, Forthcoming). The
effects of government assistance programs — particularly TANF, food
stamps, housing subsidies, SSI, and WIC (Teitler, Reichman, &
Nepomnyaschy, 2007; Livermore & Powers, 2006) — have also been
examined.
Codebooks and data for the FFCW study can be found at the home
page for the data at Princeton University, http://www.fragilefamilies.
princeton.edu/documentation.asp, or at Pennsylvania State’s SODA
POP page, http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/ff.

GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEY (GSS)

The General Social Survey is the longest-running project of the National
Opinion Research Center (NORC), with 27 rounds of cross-sectional data
collection completed since its inception in 1972; it currently runs through
2008. The GSS traces the opinions of Americans and monitors social change
and, next to the U.S. Census, is the most examined source of social science
information. The survey includes standard, core questions exploring issues
such as attitudes to various topics such as race relations, sex relations, civil
liberties, and morality, and also includes socioeconomic status and social
mobility. The survey also includes topical questions, or modules, of special
interest. Since 1982, the General Social Survey has collaborated with the
International Social Survey Program (ISSP) to gather crossnational infor-
mation on the role of the government and social inequality.
Researchers collected data annually starting in 1972, excluding 1979,
1981 and 1992, and biannually since 1994. Annual samples aim to include
1,500 respondents, but they range from 1,372 (1990 round) to 1,613
 Secondary Datasets 53

(1972 round) and, in 1994 with the introduction of a split-sample design

of two parallel samples of 1,500 respondents each, from 2,765 (2002
round) to 2,993 (2004 round). A third parallel sample was added in
2006 for a total of 4,150 respondents. Researchers oversampled Black
respondents in 1982 (354 respondents) and 1987 (353 respondents).
Researchers originally collected data through 90-minute face-to-face
interviews, with the exception of several phone interviews when neces-
sary, and they switched to computer-assisted personal interviewing
(CAPI) in 2002.
The GSS dataset contains 5,084 variables with core data topics includ-
ing age, sex, education, region of residence, and measures of attitudes
about issues like gun control or voting attendance. For instance, vari-
ables include such information as respondents’ astrological signs, trust in
public officials and other individuals, whom they voted for in presidential
elections, beliefs in abortion or capital punishment, use of contraception
(especially teenagers), disabilities, attitudes towards specific countries,
and engagement in extramarital sex or adultery. Topical content varies
from year to year of data collection, but generally only one or a few topics
were covered. For instance, some rounds of data collection include
variables for abortion and feminism (1977), role of the military (1982
and 1984), mental health (1992), environmental issues (1993), gender
and mental health (1996), and health care, health ethics and religion
(1998). With the introduction of the split-sample design in 1994, respon-
dents in each of the subsamples respond to identical core questions
and different topical, ISSP modules. In that same year, researchers
reduced the number of core questions in order to create mini-modules,
which are more flexible to advancements and responsive to new variables
of interest. Thus, in 2004, topical modules included work environment,
immigration, genes, guns, Catholics, and alcohol; in 2006, topical mod-
ules were added for mental health, gun control, and disability.
GSS provides information on neighborhoods, including opinions on
segregated neighborhoods, safety, racial makeup, number of gay people,
number of cohabiting people, number of regular church attendees,
number of conservatives and liberals, number of people in prison,
and number of unemployed.
GSS provides information on HIV including HIV testing, the option
of suicide if diagnosed with an incurable disease, and opinion if ADHD
is a real disease.
54 Secondary Data Analysis

GSS includes variables that provide public opinion on topics includ-

ing homosexual rights, sex education in public schools, sex before
marriage, adultery, available information about sex, if homosexuality is
inherent or a choice, sex and faith, gender discrimination, prostitution,
sexual harassment, number of sexual partners since respondent was
18 years old, age of first homosexual attraction, age first revealed to
another that the respondent had sexual relations with someone of the
same sex, government programs on safe sex, sex with friends, sex with
acquaintances, and frequency of sex in the past year.
Data from the General Social Survey has been used by many research-
ers in their studies. A popular research topic is relationships, with many
different facets studied, such as correlations among social networks,
marital status, and well-being (Acock & Hulrbert, 1993); examining the
marriage and lifestyle choices of former commune members (Aidala,
1989); and comparing husbands’ and wives’ family-life satisfaction
(Mancini, 1979). Some studies look at ethnicity, including research ana-
lyzing whether Black neighborhoods have higher crimes rates (Quillian
and Pager, 2001), the involvement of culture to social structure and
communities (Jeannotte, 2003), and studying ethnic identity among
whites (Alba & Chamlin, 1983). Other studies look at education, such as
research that examines shifts in important qualities to children between
1964 and 1984 (Alwin, 1989), teachers’ salary satisfaction (Matthews,
Weaver, Cisneros, & Franz, 1992), and the correlation between Catholic
high schools and academic achievement in rural areas (Sander, 2001).
Other areas of study include the public opinion of Roe v. Wade (Adamek,
1994), the perceived strength of religious beliefs (Alston, 1973), the rela-
tionship between condom use and HIV risk among adults in the United
States (Anderson, 2003), public opinion on economic and political
development in China (Andreosso-O’Callaghan, Wang, & Rees, 2004),
measuring labor market success (Jencks, Perman, & Rainwater, 1988),
the correlation between firearms and suicide (Markush and Bartolucci,
1984), the connection between age and anger (Schieman, 1999), and
unethical behavior of political officials (Maule and Goidel, 2003).
The full GSS data can be downloaded online from the ICPSR for
those whose institutions are members, or from the Survey Documentation
and Analysis website at the University of California, Berkeley http://sda.
berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda2?setupfile=harcsda&datasetname=gss08&ui
=2&action=subset). All or some of the data (all or some years and all
 Secondary Datasets 55

or some variables) can be downloaded in SAS, SPSS, Stata, or several

other formats. CD-ROMs can be ordered from Roper Center for Public
Opinion Research. The entire datasets, 1972–2008, can also be down-
loaded at http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website/Download/, in either
SAS, SPSS, or Stata formats. The codebook for the 1972–2008 GSS
is available at http://publicdata.norc.org:41000/gss/documents//BOOK/
Main%20Body.pdf (it is more than 2,000 pages long). GSS data are avail-
able six months after the data collection is completed. Proposals from
researchers for future GSS rounds are sometimes accepted. They should
ideally be sent in two years prior to the GSS round for which they are
desired. For more information, see the National Opinion Research
Center (http://www.norc.org) or ICPSR (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu).
Also, cross tabulations or frequencies can be calculated online (http://
sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss08) for many of the variables
in the GSS. For example, I examined the level of confidence in financial
institutions by political party affiliation. The first table gives the general
screen for examining variables in the 1972 to 2008 GSS and the second
screen gives the cross tabulations, along with z statistics, for the different
groups. These same types of tabulations and multiple regressions can be
run at http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website/Data+Analysis/.
56 Secondary Data Analysis

SDA 3.3: Tables

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: CONFINAN
-Column percent
-Z-statistic 1 2 3 ROW
-Weighted N A GREAT DEAL ONLY SOME HARDLY ANY TOTAL
45.0 46.0 44.1 45.5
1: DEMOCRAT −.23 .48 −.39 ---
175 378 83 635
2: 36.3 29.2 30.1 31.3
REPUBLICAN 2.46 −1.99 −.36 ---
141 240 56 437
3: 16.4 22.5 20.6 20.5
PARTYID1 INDEPENDENT −2.37 2.14 .03 ---
64 185 39 287
2.4 2.3 5.1 2.7
4: OTHER −.42 −1.12 2.16 ---
9 19 10 38
100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
COL TOTAL --- --- --- ---
389 821 187 1,397
Means 1.76 1.81 1.87 1.81
Std Devs .81 .86 .92 .86
Unweighted N 376 794 186 1,356

HEALTH AND RETIREMENT STUDY (HRS)

The Health and Retirement Study is a national longitudinal study
sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security
Administration with a cooperative agreement with the Survey Research
Center at the University of Michigan. The study is a merging of two data
sets: HRS and the Study of Asset and Health Dynamics among the Oldest
Old (AHEAD). HRS started in 1992 and AHEAD started in 1993; the
merging of the datasets occurred in 1998. The ongoing study, which
began in 1992, focuses on Americans over the age of 50 and collects
information on health, marital, family, and economic status, as well as
support systems, both public and private. Data is collected through bien-
nial surveys, using questionnaire interviews, with most questions asked
to both people in coupled relationships within the household. Some
questions are asked only to a specific respondent, such as the female
spouse or the person most responsible for family finances.
New cohorts are added every six years, with the third cohort starting
in 2004 (with previous cohorts in 1992 and 1998). African Americans
and Latinos were oversampled in order to get good sample sizes for
these groups. The original 1992 sample consisted of 8,222 observations.
There have been seven waves of data collection: 1992 (N=12,654),
 Secondary Datasets 57

1994 (N=11,597), 1996 (N=11,199), 1998 (N=10,857), 2000 (N=10,377),

2002 (N=10,142), and 2004 (N=9,759 respondents). The next cohort
will be added in 2010. The original HRS can be studied back to 1992 and
the original AHEAD cohort can be studied back to 1993.
The HRS includes variables pertaining to family structure; employ-
ment history; disability status; health and life insurance; finances, includ-
ing assets, debt, and retirement and pension income; widow and divorce
status and their economic impact; Internet use; prescription drug use;
and housing, including type and associated costs. HRS includes infor-
mation on prescription drug use through a two-wave off-year survey,
conducted in 2005 and 2007, that tracks changes in prescription drug use
after the implementation of Medicare Part D. HRS did a memory study
from 2001 to 2005, using in-home assessments to determine the severity
of any dementia found. The data also include information on time and
money use.
Aspects of widowhood and divorce are examined in detail, including
predivorce and death amount of work earnings, work hours, and Social
Security benefits; changes to these due to a death or separation; changes
in health insurance; receipt of a life insurance settlement or lump-sum
pension and amount; expenses associated with spouse’s death and ill-
ness; assistance from a grandchild; cause of death; state in which death
occurred; loss of claim on former/late spouse’s pension; and expenses
due to legal fees during divorce. Government and private health insur-
ance information is given, including insurance during nursing home
stays, military health care plans, loss of eligibility, amount paid through
their plan, and length of time on current plan. HRS also provides infor-
mation on life insurance, such as number of policies, face value of plan,
and beneficiaries. Financial information includes assets, debts, capital
gains, mortgage crises, retirement plans, and pensions. HRS includes
housing variables on type of housing unit; renting versus ownership;
ownership of surrounding land; present value; presence of a mortgage,
second mortgage, or loan to pay for dwelling; property tax and insur-
ance; and purchase price of the home.
Geographical information is available at the state, county, and
census-tract levels. Special signed contracts and IRB approval are neces-
sary for using these geographical identifiers.
Growing Older in America: The Health and Retirement Study outlines
research findings using HRS data, describes HRS development, and
58 Secondary Data Analysis

includes figures and tables (see http://www.nia.nih.gov/NR/rdonlyres/

D164FE6C-C6E0-4E78-B27F-7E8D8C0FFEE5/0/HRS_Text_WEB.pdf).
The HRS data have been used to examine many different areas of
study concerning the U.S. population that is over 50 years of age.
Researchers have studied health concerns such as the health care costs of
moderate and severe obesity (Andreyeva, Sturm, & Ringel, 2004), age
differences and depression due to functional impairment (Choi & Kim,
2007), effects of pollution on health conditions and mortality (Evans &
Smith, 2005), smoking cessation in middle-aged Americans (Falba,
2005), and the effects of physical activity on older adults with arthritis.
Other researchers have studied insurance and benefits, such as the effect
of part-time work on wages, looking at Social Security (Aaronson &
French, 2004), the correlation between loss of health insurance and a
decline in self-reported health issues (Baker, Sudano, Albert, Borawski,
& Dor, 2002), and delays in claiming Social Security benefits (Coile,
Diamond, Gruber, & Jousten, 2002). Other research focuses have been
nursing home use and racial differences (Akamigbo & Wolinsky, 2007)
and the effects of personal care and assistive devices on the measurement
of disability (Agree, 1999). Others have studied widowhood in older
minority women (Angel, Jimenez, & Angel, 2007), the influence of reli-
gion on patient satisfaction (Benjamins, 2006), labor dynamics and older
couples (Blau, 1998), the importance of cohabitation with regards to
marital status and mental health benefits (Brown, Bulanda, & Lee, 2005),
and the connection between military service and wealth accumulation
(Fitzgerald, 2006).
All nonrestricted data files are available at https://ssl.isr.umich.edu/
hrs/files.php, including the 1992 HRS, 1993 AHEAD, and all other files
through 2007. HRS files can be merged together by the use of the house-
hold ID (HHID) and the person number within the household (PN).
All data must be sorted by these variables before merging. To learn
more about merging HRS files, see https://ssl.isr.umich.edu/hrs/
filedownload.php?d=525. To get the codebooks for the HRS files, go to
http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/index.php?p=showcbk.
In order to access HRS data, researchers register at http://hrsonline.
isr.umich.edu. Some of the data are restricted, requiring approval from
HRS for use. The Medicare claims and summary data require HRS
approval and a data use agreement from the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS) through the Research Data Assistance Center.
 Secondary Datasets 59

Data are in ASCII format, which can easily be transferred into SAS, SPSS,
or Stata format.
It is possible to link some of these data with Social Security and
Medicare administrative records. It is also possible to link these data with
employer surveys, such as pension plans. Contracts and IRB approval are
required to obtain such data.

LONGITUDINAL STUDIES OF CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT (LONGSCAN)

Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) is based
on an ecological-development model. LONGSCAN is a consortium of
five longitudinal research studies about child abuse and neglect. The
pooled studies follow children and their caregivers from when the child
is aged 4 or less until he is 18 years old. Given variation across the five
sites, the children enrolled in the study have experienced different degrees
of maltreatment and represent different levels and types of risk. The
study conducted or will conduct comprehensive interviews with the chil-
dren and their caregivers when the child is aged 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16 and 18.
Currently, parent, teacher, and child assessments have been completed
for children up to age 12. Researchers facilitated annual phone interviews
with the caregivers in the off year and, every two years, reviewed child
protective services case files. Child self-reporting begins at age 12. Each
of the five study sites used the same measures. Interviewer-based infor-
mation also is collected.
Researchers determine what data to collect at what age, based on
the child’s social ecology at that age. The study collects information on
the child, the caregiver, the family unit, and the larger social system. The
study includes variables related to physical, mental, and emotional
health; cognitive functioning; behavior; relationships; substance use;
violence; school performance; and service utilization.
LONGSCAN began in 1991 with funding from the National Center
for Child Abuse and Neglect. The University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill coordinates the consortium. The creators originally designed the
study to gather child abuse and neglect information pertaining to child,
family, and community risk factors for abuse as well as similar such fac-
tors that impact the degree of harm caused by the abuse and factors that
contribute to both negative and positive child outcomes.
60 Secondary Data Analysis

The dataset includes 1,354 observations. Of these children, 282 are

from the Eastern study, 245 from the Midwest study, 254 from the
Northwest study, 243 from the Southern study and 330 from the
Southwest study. From baseline to age 8, there was an attrition rate of
approximately 16% for the pooled study. Attrition rates vary by each
study site.
The five studies vary by region, community type, recruitment site,
and selection criteria. The following tables outlines these differences:

Table 4.3
Study Community Recruitment Selection Criteria
Type site
Eastern Urban Inner-city Clinic criteria for risk in first
pediatric year based on both child and
clinic parent risk factors
Midwest Urban Child Those reported to CPS and
protective receiving comprehensive
services services or only intervention
Northwest Urban Child 0-4 years old considered
protective moderate risk after report
services to CPS
Southern Suburban State pubic 4-5 years old considered high
health risk at birth
tracking
system
Southwest Urban, County Approximately 4 years old with
suburban and dependency confirmed maltreatment and
rural system out-of-home placement with
relative or foster family

The survey is not nationally representative. As a consortium of stud-

ies, it is only representative of those individuals included in the study.
Regionally, the data are representative only of those included in that
region.
Information on child characteristics was collected by interviewing
caregivers, the child, or both. The dataset includes information pertain-
ing to children’s birth and their first year of life, and day care utilization
during this time. Information was collected on child health and injuries,
pubertal development, employment, resiliency and future orientation,
 Secondary Datasets 61

school orientation and problems, life events, abuse (physical, psycho-

logical, and sexual), delinquent and violent behavior, sexual experiences
and risk behaviors, and sibling/peer/dating/community violence. The
dataset also includes instruments on social competence; temperament;
developmental status and adaptive behavior; cognitive functioning;
behavior problems; tobacco, drugs and alcohol use; suicidality; health risk;
affective symptoms; psychopathology; parental relationships and expecta-
tions; peer relationships; social problem solving; perceived competence;
exposure to alcohol and drugs; risk behaviors of family and friends;
academic achievement; delinquency and criminal/judicial involvement;
exposure or witness to violence at home or in the community; neglect;
victimization; parenthood; attitudes towards parenting; coping style/
strategies; self-esteem; and social desirability. Information is also
included on the child’s history with child protective services that is gath-
ered through a review of CPS case files and the state’s central registry.
Caregiver characteristics collected include physical health, history of
loss and victimization, religious and organizational affiliation and
involvement and expectations of the child. Other caregiver information
includes attitudes towards parenting and deviance; tobacco, alcohol and
drug use; mental health; and social desirability.
The data includes information about the family unit such as family
supports, health and welfare services used by the family, parental involve-
ment in the child’s school, and the accessibility of guns in home.
Additional variables include family satisfaction and functioning, daily
stressors, household rules and routines, quality of the spouse/partner
relationship and the parent/child relationship, domestic/interpersonal
violence and the use of physical discipline, father’s involvement in par-
enting, parental monitoring of the child, family use of drugs and alcohol,
and information about hunger and poverty. Interviewer-rated informa-
tion includes home environment characteristics.
Information was collected on caregiver-provided macrosystems in
which the child and family live. The group of variables included informa-
tion about unemployment, income and welfare, neighborhood charac-
teristics, school safety, social support for both the caregiver and the child,
risk behaviors of family and friends, and ethnic minority status.
The breadth of LONGSCAN variables makes it possible to examine
both risk and protective factors and consequences of maltreatment at a
variety of levels—individual child and parent, familial, and community.
62 Secondary Data Analysis

Researchers also can study the impact of interventions at the same levels
and conduct subgroup analysis or comparisons across different demo-
graphics. Given that data is collected in specific regions, researchers can
also study the impact of policies and legislation on outcomes.
Researchers have used LONGSCAN to study the relationship between
child maltreatment and health (Flaherty, Thompson, Litrownik, Theodore,
English, Black, Wike, Whimper, Runyan, & Dubowitz, 2006), depression
and suicidality (Litrownik, Newton, & Landsverk, 2005; Thompson,
Briggs, English, Dubowitz, Lee, Brody, Everson & Hunter, 2005),
childhood aggression (Kotch, Lewis, Hussey, English, Thompson,
Litrownik, Runyan, Bangdiwala, Margolis, & Dubowitz, 2008), sexual-
ized behaviors (Merrick, Litrownik, Everson, & Cox, 2008) and weapon
possession (Lewis et al., 2007). Studies also examine the relationship
among caregiver, familial, and neighborhood factors on children’s
behavior, health, and service use (Lindsey et al., 2008), discipline and
child behaviors (Lau, Litrownik, Newton, Black, & Everson, 2006;
De Robertis & Litrownik, 2004). Related studies explore the associations
among caregiver, family, and other social characteristics on children’s
health and service use (Thompson et al., 2007; Thompson & May, 2006;
Thompson, 2005). One study examines the impact of services on chil-
dren’s behaviors (Thompson, in press).
Studies examine predictors of re-referrals to child protective services
(Thompson & Wiley, in press) as well as the relationship between domes-
tic violence and child maltreatment (Lee, Kotch, & Cox, 2004), mothers’
experience with violence and maltreatment (Weisbart et al., 2008;
Thompson, 2006), mothers’ experience with violence and childrens’
behaviors (Thompson, 2007), and the relationship between child charac-
teristics and living arrangements (Romney, Litrownik, Newton, & Lau,
2006).
Researchers have also used the data to compare child, adult and/or
child protection services reports on the same variable (Everson et al.,
2008; Thompson et al., 2006), test measure validity (Thompson et al.,
2007) and explore definitions of maltreatment (Dubowitz et al., 2005).
The data are not publicly available and are only available to faculty
and nonstudent researchers at institutions with institutional review
boards. The codebook for LONGSCAN can be found at http://www.
ndacan.cornell.edu/Ndacan/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/144.pdf.
 Secondary Datasets 63

NATIONAL CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT DATA SYSTEM (NCANDS)

The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) is a
national data collection process that gathers data from child and protec-
tive services in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
States voluntarily submit both child-level and state-level information
pertaining to the report, investigation, and disposition of alleged child
maltreatment; child-victim characteristics and risk factors; caregiver
risks factors; child and family service provision; perpetrator characteris-
tics; fatalities due to maltreatment; and caseworker and agency informa-
tion. The NCANDS considers a child to be someone under 18 years old.
States began submitting state-level data in 1990, with case-level data
beginning in 1995. Puerto Rico began submitting data in 2005.
The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System emerged as a
result of the Child Abuse Prevention, Adoption and Family Services Act
of 1998 and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which
required the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) to
collect and analyze national child maltreatment data. The NCANDS’
principal investigator and funding agency is Children’s Bureau,
Administration on Children, Youth and Families of the U.S Department
of Health and Human Services.
The NCANDS has been collecting both case-level and aggregate
state-level data since 1990. States submit case-level data using the Child
File or its predecessor, the Detailed Case Data Component (DCDC). The
Child file contains information for each child identified on each report
made to child and protective services. Researchers have gathered infor-
mation specific to that child, with up to four allegations of maltreatment.
The NCANDS Child File dataset contains seven categories of variables:
report data, child data, child maltreatment data, child risk factors, care-
taker risk factors, services provided, and perpetrator data. The Combined
Aggregate File (CAF) provides aggregate state-level data and includes
data about preventative services and their funding, number of referrals
and the children that are screened out, response time and number of staff
responsible for certain functions, use of preservation services and number
of children reunified with their families, contacts with court representa-
tives, and child fatalities among families using preservation services who
have been reunified, or among children in foster care, including those not
reported in the Child File. The CAF also includes aggregate case-specific
64 Secondary Data Analysis

information such as the report source; disposition outcomes; type of

maltreatment; victim sex, age and race; fatality information; and service
provision.
While the NCANDS data is census in nature, it is representative only
of those children whose alleged victimization was reported to child and
protective services. It is not generalizable to all children experiencing
maltreatment, given that not all abuse and neglect is reported.
The number of observations varies from year to year as more states
provide detailed case information. For example, in 2000, the dataset
included 1,032,362 observations, a number that increased to 3,477,988 in
2006. Currently, all states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico
provide case-level data. While the dataset is census data, years 2004
through 2006 include a sample dataset, selected through systematic sam-
pling, in addition to the complete dataset. The reason for providing these
samples is because the full sample datasets have grown to be large. These
smaller datasets can be more easily run with a similar level of confidence
as the larger-population datasets. According to NCANDS, the 2004 and
2005 sample data should be generalizable to the full dataset, though they
caution against presenting results from the sample data.
The NCANDS provides data on child abuse and neglect, child and
caregiver risk factors, perpetrators, service utilization, foster care and
adoption, and use of public assistance. The NCANDS identifies eight
types of maltreatment (including physical, sexual, psychological abuse,
deprivation of necessities and medical neglect), nine types of disposi-
tions, living arrangements at the time of abuse, and whether death or
injuries resulted from abuse. Child and caregivers risk factors include the
presence of alcohol and drug abuse or domestic violence in the home,
diagnoses of disabilities, behavioral problems or medical conditions,
inadequate housing, financial problems, and the use of public assistance.
Services utilization variables include post investigation services such as
family support and family preservation services, foster care, a juvenile
court petition, adoption assistance or education, employment, housing,
legal, or health assistance. Perpetrators data includes such variables as
demographics, relationship to the child, military status, and history with
perpetration. Child data includes child’s age at report, sex, race, ethnic-
ity, living arrangements, and whether the child has been a victim of pre-
viously substantiated or indicated maltreatment.
 Secondary Datasets 65

Aggregated state level data provide information on a variety of topics

required by the CAPTA legislation. These include summary information
about investigations and outcomes, preventative services and referrals,
staffing and response time, preservation services, and child fatalities
among families using preservation services, reunification, foster care,
and contacts with court representatives.
Given that NCANDS provides both case-level and aggregate
state-level data, researchers can gain information about statewide or
nationwide trends, as well as information specific to cases using a variety
of multivariate statistical analyses. The data make it possible to gather
information not only about descriptive statistics, but also about risk fac-
tors for maltreatment and fatality from maltreatment, likelihood of
occurrence, and differences in maltreatment across a variety of child and
family factors. Several researchers have created longitudinal datasets
using data over several reporting years and conducted hazard analyses.
NCANDS is just one of several datasets collecting information about
child maltreatment and, as such, researchers can compare their analyses
with those of other datasets to explore differences across measures.
Additionally, both case- and state-level data can be analyzed alongside
state laws, and state definitions of abuse, to study the relationship
between laws and maltreatment.
Since 1995, the Department of Health and Human Services’
Administration for Children, Youth and Families has published annual
bulletins detailing its analysis of that year’s data. These publications
report on outcomes relating to referrals, reports, investigations, and out-
comes of maltreatment allegations, characteristics of the children
involved in those reports, maltreatment related fatalities, service provi-
sion, and perpetrator characteristics. These reports are available on the
DHHS website, http://www.acf.hhs.gov.
Researchers have used NCANDS data to study a variety of child abuse
and neglect questions, including the risk of nonfatal infant maltreatment
(Brodowski et al., 2008), factors that correlate or predict maltreatment
(Chance & Scannapieco, 2002), and repeated abuse and re-referrals to
child protective services (Connell, Bergeron, Katz, Saunders, & Tebes,
2007; Fluke, Shusterman, Hollinshead, & Yuan, 2008; Palusci, Smith, &
Paneth, 2005). Researchers also have compared maltreatment rates and
types between military and nonmilitary families (McCarroll, Ursano,
66 Secondary Data Analysis

Fan, & Newby, 2004), and across race and ethnicity (Earle & Cross, 2001;
Fluke, Yuan, Hedderson, & Curtis, 2003). Others have studied perpetra-
tor characteristics (Shusterman, Fluke, & Yuan, 2005), worker percep-
tions of neglect (Fox, 2004) and frequency trends across states
(Wertheimer & Atienza, 2006).
The multiyear codebook for the NCANDS can be found at http://
www.ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/
NCANDS_MultiYear_Guide.pdf. All datasets, except the Agency File,
are available through the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and
Neglect for the years in which they were or are in use (http://www.
ndacan.cornell.edu). The data are restricted and the necessary proce-
dures and documentation must be given in order to obtain the data.

NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL LONGITUDINAL SURVEY (NELS)

The National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS) is a longitudinal
study that follows eighth-grade students as they transition into and out
of high school. The study aims to observe changes in children’s lives
during adolescence and the role of school in promoting growth and
positive life choices. NELS observes students’ academic growth, features
of effective schools, schools’ ability to help disadvantaged students,
academic performance and school experiences of minority students, and
transitions into the working world and/or higher education. The study
began in 1988, when the students were in Grade 8, and included four
follow-up periods of data collection in 1990 and 1992, when students
were generally in Grades 10 and 12, respectively (and also followed those
who dropped out of high school as well), and 1994 and 2000, post-high
school. Data was collected through questionnaires and, in the first three
waves, through achievement tests in mathematics, reading, social stud-
ies, and science. NELS makes it possible to link student, dropout, parent,
teacher, and school data as well as conduct analysis on subgroups, such
as by region, race/ethnicity or private schools.
The nationally representative sample contains 1,000 schools and
24,599 students. The schools are representative of the approximately
40,000 public and private schools in the United States with enrolled
eighth graders in 1988. The students represent the 3 million eighth
 Secondary Datasets 67

graders attending schools in 1988. It is not, however, representative of

students from Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools, schools for stu-
dents with disabilities, area vocational schools that do not enroll students
directly, and overseas schools for the children of U.S. personnel. The
study oversampled, and provides sampling weights, for a variety of
subgroups such as Hispanics, Asians, and private-school students.
Dropouts remained in the study.
The baseline, 1988, sample includes 24,599 students. Data were col-
lected from students, one parent of each student respondent, school
principals (N=1,032) and teachers (N=approximately 5,000). The first
follow-up (1990) included approximately 25,000 respondents and a
response rate of 99% and 98% for the school districts and schools,
respectively. Parents did not participate in the second wave, which gath-
ered information about the transition into high school and from stu-
dents who dropped out before 10th grade. The second follow-up (1992)
wave contained a subsample of the original sample (N=14,000) has
approximately 25,000 students, refreshed to create a representative
sample of the 12th-grade cohort. This follow-up was designed to provide
information about curriculum, student performance, and course-taking
opportunities. Baseline through the second follow-up (1992) are avail-
able as one dataset and include 27,394 observations. The third follow-up
(1994) contains 14,915 observations and looks at employment, access to
post-secondary institutions, and family formation. The fourth follow-up
(2000) had a sample of 12,144 students.
The student questionnaire inquires about school, work, home, their
neighborhoods, academic achievements and aspirations, career goals,
educational support and resources, and the role of education in their
home and with their peers. Education variables include grades; subjects
taken; extracurricular activities; general feelings regarding school and the
teachers; boredom in school; school interactions with theft, drugs, and
fights; future expectations; amount of time spent on homework; and par-
ticipation in science experiments. Other education, deviant behavior,
and self-assessment variables include smoking and drug (e.g., cocaine)
and alcohol use; extracurricular activities; whether ever incarcerated;
attitudes toward weapons; the presence of fights, cheating, and stealing at
school; feelings about self and other; future aspirations; and beliefs on
various issues, such as sex before marriage.
68 Secondary Data Analysis

The base-year survey has many questions on languages spoken by

the respondents, English proficiency, and participation in language-
assistance programs. Respondents are asked whether they have children
while in high school (or when they are high school age but are no longer
in high school).
The dropout questionnaire includes reason for dropping out, rea-
sons for pre-dropout, long absences from school, encouragement from
school to not drop out or offering of alternatives, parental punishment
upon leaving school or encouragement to return, participation in alter-
natives, participation in gangs, receipt of GED, future plans, and parental
and personal expectations.
The school administrator questionnaire provides information on
average daily attendance, percentage of eighth-grade students who live in
a single-parent family, number of students who receive special services,
base salary for teachers, admissions process for the school, financial aid,
standardized tests, gifted and talented program, school climate, team
teaching, college representatives, and outstanding teacher awards.
The parent questionnaire provides information on finance and edu-
cational expenses as well as the sexual orientation of the parent and his or
her partner. The teacher questionnaire provides in-depth information
on teachers’ class schedules, materials used for classes, and preparedness.
The fourth follow-up, when students are approximately eight years
post-high school, collected data pertaining to work information, degrees
attained, activities outside of work, marital status, alcohol use, and
income.
The specific data collected each year vary from round to round.
Teachers, parents, and school administrators also were surveyed, and the
students’ coursework and grades were acquired through high school and
postsecondary transcripts.
After you have received the NELS CD, you will set up the program
and go into the codebook. In the codebook, variable names are based, in
part, on when and from whom the information was collected. For exam-
ple, variables beginning with BY indicate that these were collected in the
base year, or 1988. F1 variable were collected in 1990 (Year 1 follow up),
F2 is the second follow up, and so on. The following comes from the
Quick Guide to Using the NELS: 88/2000 data (http://nces.ed.gov/sur-
veys/NELS88/pdf/QuickGuide.PDF).
 Secondary Datasets 69

1988→ 1990→ 1992→ 1994→ 2000

Base Year 1st Follow-up 2nd Follow-up 3rd Follow-up 4th Follow-up
(BY) (F1) (F2) (F3) (F4)
The first three to four characters of each variable name identify the section that
the variable belongs (e.g., BYS = Base-year Student; F2P = Second Follow-up
Parent). At the end of the first and second follow-up student sections, the
composite variables (and weights) are followed by responses for freshened
students. At the end of the second follow-up freshened student variables, the
record contains composite (summary) high school transcript variables.

Quick Guide to Using the NELS:88/2000 Data

Table A-1.—NELS:88 student-level datafile content, by survey and ECB: 1988-2000
List order* Base year 1st Follow-up 2nd Follow-up 3rd Follow-up 4th Follow-up
(1988) (1990) (1992) (1994) (2000)
1. By student
data
2. F1 student data
3. F2 student data
4. F1 dropout data
5. F2 dropout data
6. BY school
administrator
data
7. F1 school
administrator data
8. F2 school
administrator data
9. BY parent data
10. F2 parent data
11. BY teacher data
12. F1 teacher data
13. F2 teacher data
14. F3 student data
15. F4 student data
N2P ECB (27,394 students)
Datafile-stmeg.pub
N4P ECB (14,915 students)
Datafile-stmeg3.pub
N0P ECB (12,144 students)
Datafile-BYF4stu.dat

*List order refers to the order the variables appear on the data file and ECB.

These tables describe how the data were collected, and from whom.
Once in the electronic codebook, you can click on particular vari-
ables, then click on “View” at the top of the page to see both descriptions
of the variable and the frequency for the variable. You’ll notice that all
variables have missing data codes. You’ll need to take this missing data
information into account when making up variables. The electronic code
70 Secondary Data Analysis

Quick Guide to Using the NELS:88/2000 Data

Table A-1.—NELS:88 student-level datafile content, by survey and ECB: 1988-2000—continued

List Base year 1st Follow-up 2nd Follow-up 3rd Follow-up 4th Follow-up

16. F3 attendance F4 attendance

N0P (16,459 institutions
X students)
Datafile - pseF3F4.dat

17. F3 institution F4
N0P (3,217 institutions)
Datafile - instF3F4.dat

18. F3 enrollment

N0P (11,560 students X institutions

X number)
Datafile - pse1994.dat

*List order refers to the order the variables appear on the data file.

book that you load from the CD received from the National Center for
Education Statistics looks like the figure given in page 71.
From this screen, you can either choose variables by clicking on the
box next to the variable, or view descriptions of the variables by clicking
on view at the top of the page when the variable is highlighted. There are
a lot of variables in this list (all variables in the public use data set from
all waves of the data) so you may choose to tag some of the variables now,
and come back and tag more later. To do this, click on output, then tag
file. Please see the the figure depicting this in page 72.
You will then give the tag file a name, and you can come back to it
later by clicking on “Import tag files.” Once you have finished tagging all
of your variables, click on “File, Output,” and then choose either SAS or
SPSS to output the file. I have output a file to SAS with a few variables.
You will next have to go into SAS (or SPSS, if you’re using that program),
and run the file to get a SAS output file. The code will include format
codes, which you can choose to include or not, but it does not include
Secondary Datasets 71
72 Secondary Data Analysis

missing value codes, and you will need to take care of missing values.
The code looks like the following.
LIBNAME N0P ‘C:\ECBW\N0P’;

DATA X1;INFILE ‘D:\ECBW\N0P\DATA\BYF4STU.DAT’

LRECL=1024 PAD;INPUT ID 1-7
BYS2A 26-26 BYS5A 30-30 BYS8A 34-34 BYS8D 37-37
BYS8I 42-42 BYS21 54-54 BYS23 57-58 //////////////;

LABEL
BYS2A=’IS MOTHER/FEMALE GUARDIAN LIVING’
BYS5A=’IS FATHER/MALE GUARDIAN LIVING’
BYS8A=’R LIVES IN HOUSEHOLD WITH FATHER’
BYS8D=’R LIVES IN HH WITH OTHER FEMALE GUARDIAN’
BYS8I=’R LIVES IN HOUSEHOLD W/ NON-RELATIVE(S)’
BYS21=’ANY OTHER LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN R^S HOME’
BYS23=’OTHER LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN R^S HOME’;
run;

After you run this, you will have your variables in SAS format.
The codebook for the NELS can be found on the CD for the data,
which can be obtained from the NCES.
 Secondary Datasets 73

NELS data have been used to study some of the causes of teen abuse
of alcohol and smoking and teen delinquency, which include parent’s
divorce (Jeynes, 2001) and parent/youth conflict (Liu, 2004). The data
also have been used to examine the effects of neighborhoods (Ainsworth,
2002), participation in extracurricular activities (Zaff, Moore, Papillo, &
Williams, 2003), and entrepreneurial parents (Davila & Mora, 2004) on
scholastic achievement and positive life outcomes. Private schools also
have been studied, particularly the effects of school uniforms (Bodine,
2003) and Catholic schools, including a study of single-sex versus coedu-
cational Catholic schools (LePore & Warren, 1997) and the effects of reli-
gious commitments (Jeynes, 2003). Researchers have used NELS data to
observe the causes of school violence (Honora & Rolle, 2002) and victim-
ization (Anderman & Kimweli, 1997), as well as the effects of student
mobility on dropping out (Rumberger & Larson, 1998), of growing up
mutlilingual (Yeung, Marsh, & Suliman, 2000), of participation in vol-
untary associations on their voting behavior (Frisco, Muller, & Dodson,
2004), and of substance use by students with disabilities on academic,
employment, and social achievements (Hollar & Moore, 2004). Other
studies include the consequences of employment during high school
(Warren, LePore, & Mare, 2000); the relationship between poverty and
teen pregnancy (Young, Martin, Young, & Ting, 2001); the results of
at-home computer use (Du & Huang, 2002), single parents (Battle, 2002;
Deleire & Kalil, 2003), and gender on mathematics achievement
(Bielinski & Davidson, 2001); the effects of inquiry-based teacher prac-
tices on excellence in science (Von Secker, 2002); differences in educa-
tional attainment among Asian-American and other ethnic groups
(Vartanian, Karen, Buck, & Cadge, 2007) and studies into the past look-
ing at racially segregated colleges (Bennett & Xie, 2003).
Data are available through the National Center for Education
Statistics (http://www.nces.ed.gov). All years of the data (including all
follow-ups to the base year) are available online at the International
Archive of Educational Data (http://search.icpsr.umich.edu/IAED/
query.html?col=abstract&op0=%2B&tx0=national+education+longitu
dinal+study+of+1988+(nels)+series&ty0=p&fl0=series%3A&op1=-
&tx1=restricted&ty1=w&fl1=availability%3A&op2=%2B&tx2=IAED&
ty2=w&fl2=archive%3A&nh=50&rf=3). Some data, such as students’
transcripts, neighborhood characteristics, and college choice, can be
accessed only with an NCES data license. Information on obtaining such
74 Secondary Data Analysis

licenses can be found at http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/licenses.asp.

Additional information, including a Quick Guide, is available on the
NCES website. The codebooks and data are available on a CD-Rom from
the NCES.

NATIONAL HEALTH AND NUTRITION EXAMINATION SURVEY (NHANES)

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a
set of cross-sectional studies designed to obtain information on the
health and nutritional status of the U.S. population. Sample members
are both interviewed and medically examined. NHANES also includes
the Epidemiologic Follow-up Study (NHEFS), a national longitudinal
study that explores the clinical, nutritional, and behavioral factors
assessed in NHANES I (with data originally collected from 1971 to 1975)
and studies their relationship to subsequent morbidity, mortality, and
hospital utilization. NHEFS also gives information on changes in risk
factors, functional limitation, and institutionalization. The NHANES
generally collects data on individuals aged 2 months to 74 years old.
Researchers collected data through personal and computer-assisted
interviews and physical examinations, completed both in home and in
research facilities.
The NHANES consists of nine cross-sectional datasets: NHANES I,
NHANES II, NHANES III, Hispanic HANES, and NHANES 1999–2000,
2001–2002, 2003–2004, 2005–2006, and 2007–2008. NHANES I, col-
lected from 1971 to 1975, consists of 31,973 individuals. A subsample of
participations (N=23,808) also participated in a medical examination at
the end of the survey, with those aged 25 to 74 years included in the data-
set. The medical examination tested for numerous medical conditions
for respondents that are explained below. This study oversampled low-
income individuals, preschool children, women of childbearing age, and
the elderly, all of whom are more at risk for malnutrition, to help deter-
mine the extent of malnutrition in the country. NHANES II, collected
from 1976 to 1980, consists of 27,801 individuals with 25,286 inter-
viewed, and 20,322 interviewed and examined. This study oversampled
for individuals and children at or below the poverty line. NHANES III,
collected from 1988 to 1994, consists of 33,994 individuals, aged
2 months and older. This study included an emphasis on environmental
 Secondary Datasets 75

effects on health and nutrition. Hispanic HANES (HHANES), focused

on the health and nutritional status of Hispanics, consists of 16,000 indi-
viduals with data collected from 1982 to 1984. The sample includes
7,462 Mexican Americans, 1,357 Cuban Americans, and 2,834 Puerto
Ricans. NHANES also includes datasets for 2000 (N=9,965), NHANES
2001–2002 (N=9,965), NHANES 2003–2004 (N=10,122), NHANES
2005–2006 (N=12,162), and the soon-to-be released NHANES 2007–
2008.
The NHANES Epidemiologic Follow-up Study (NHEFS) is a series of
follow-up studies of NHANES I respondents. The sample includes 14,407
individuals, aged 24 to 74 years, who completed the medical examina-
tion. Four follow-up studies have been completed, in 1982–1984, 1986,
1987, and 1992. The 1986 NHEFS includes original cohort members
aged 55 to 74 years (N=3,980). The 1987 and 1992 NHEFS include the
nondeceased members of the original sample, with samples of 11,750
and 11,195, respectively. In the initial study, researchers collected data by
tracing the cohort; conducting personal interviews; measuring weight,
pulse rate, and blood pressure; collecting hospital records of home and
overnight stays; and collecting death certificates.
All the NHANES panels include physical measurements and results
of physical examinations (e.g., they drew blood and measured blood
content). It is the only national study that includes a wide range of
survey-based variables but also many biological measures that can be
used as objective indicators of health and nutritional status. Starting in
2002, the NHANES also includes a 24-hour dietary recall, which also
includes the amount of plain water consumed over the previous 24 hours
and the frequency of consumption of fish and shellfish over the last 30 days.
Researchers collected data on individual and family variables.
NHANES includes variables relating to sexual activity and sexually trans-
mitted diseases of those aged 14 to 59 years, including frequency of
activity, number of partners, condom use, and sexually transmitted
diseases. A mental health questionnaire, for respondents aged 12 to
59 years, includes variables relating to use of illegal drugs, such as
marijuana, cocaine, and street drugs. NHANES also includes data on
immunizations, reproductive health, obesity, sleep disorders, vision
problems, allergies, balance problems, and diseases and chronic illnesses,
such as arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, and cardiovascular and
respiratory diseases. The dataset also includes variables about food
76 Secondary Data Analysis

security, smoking and tobacco use, physical activity, TV viewing, and

computer use. There is extensive information available about body mass
index, including self-reported height and current weight as well as weight
one year ago, intentional versus unintentional change over year, loss or
gain of weight in the past year, how did the respondent lose weight over
the past year or not gain weight, self-reported weight 10 years ago, self-
reported heaviest weight and age at this time, and self-reported lowest
weight since 18 years of age and the age at this point. Also available is
early childhood information, including maternal characteristics such as
smoking, birth weight, and participation in Head Start/Early Head Start.
Researchers have used NHANES to conduct research in many areas
relating to health and nutrition. For instance, researchers have looked at
nutrition and diabetes (Heikes, Eddy, Arondekar, & Schlessinger, 2008)
and popcorn consumption (Grandjean, Fulgoni, Reimers, & Agarwal,
2008). Other studies look at obesity (Ogden, Carroll, & Flegal, 2008), and
its relationship with functional disability and elderly Americans (Chen &
Guo, 2008), the effects of changes in obesity prevalence and smoking
prevalence (Flegal, 2007), and cause-specific deaths associated with
overweight and obesity (Flegal, Graubard, & Williamson, 2007). Other
research explores the association between blood lead levels and osteopo-
rosis (Campbell & Auinger, 2007). Research relating to sexually transmit-
ted diseases explores syphilis (Gottlieb et al., 2008) and gonorrhea and
Chlamydia (Datta et al., 2007). Other research topics relate to environ-
mental issues and health, such as the effects of triclosan in urine (Calafat,
Ye, Wong, Reidy, & Needham, 2008) and different environmental chem-
icals that enter the human body (LaKind, Barraj, Tran, & Aylward, 2008),
folic acid consumption patterns (Quinlivan & Gregory, 2007), biological
risk profiles with education, income, and ethnic differences (Seeman
et al., 2008), and the association between calcium and body mass index
and body fat in American Indians (Eilat-Adar et al., 2007).
The NHANES data are available through the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. Publicly released data includes NHANES I,
NHANES II, NHANES III, HHANES and NHANES 1999–2000, 2001–
2002, 2003–2004, and 2005–2006. NHANES 2007–2008 is in the process
of being released. In order to access not-yet-public data, researchers
complete a data agreement to garner approval. Most data is available in
SAS code or an SAS transport format for use with other statistical soft-
ware programs, such as SPSS and SUDAAN.
 Secondary Datasets 77

Documentation for the NHANES studies can be found in

numerous places, including http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/nhanesi.
htm, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/nhanesii.htm, and http://www.
cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhanes/nhanes3/snh3hrm.pdf for the NHANESI to
the NHANESIII datasets, and more generally at http://www.cdc.gov/
nchs/nhanes.htm.

THE NATIONAL LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF ADOLESCENT HEALTH

(ADD HEALTH)
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health)
is a longitudinal study that collects individual, family, school, and
community-level data pertaining to the health and well-being of adoles-
cents and the influence of social networks (parents, friends, peers, and
neighborhoods) on adolescent health and risk behaviors. The nationally
representative sample includes more than 20,000 young people. Data
collection began in 1994–1995, when the youth were in Grades 7 to 12,
with subsequent waves occurring in 1995–1996, 2001–2002, and 2007–
2008. The study oversampled highly educated African Americans,
Chinese, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and disabled adolescents. There are also
samples of adopted adolescents and, given that in some households more
than one child was interviewed, samples exist for pairs of adolescents
living in the same household.
Respondents were selected from 132 participating schools, 80 of
which were high schools. One feeder school for each high school selected
also participated. If a school declined, a new school was chosen. The
data collection comprised a combination of in-school questionnaires
and in-home interviews. The self-administered in-school student inter-
views took place in a 45- to 60-minute class period. The in-home adoles-
cent questionnaires, administered using CAPI, took between 60 and
120 minutes, depending on the number of questions asked, a determina-
tion based on factors such as age, gender, and past experience. The parent
questionnaire was a 40-minute, pencil-and-paper interview conducted
by an interviewer. Data collection also included a 5-minute picture
vocabulary test. For those who dropped out of school, in-home ques-
tionnaires were administered, with additional questions related to
reasons for dropping out of school.
78 Secondary Data Analysis

Wave 1 (1994–1995), when respondents were between Grades 7 and

12, consisted of adolescent in-school questionnaires (N=20,745) and
school administrator self-administered questionnaires (N=164). Wave 2
(1995-1996) consisted of in-home interviews with the adolescent
(N=14,738), with parents answering questions about their children
(N=17,713) and about themselves as parents (N=17,699). School admin-
istrators were interviewed by phone. Some Wave 1 participants were inel-
igible to participate again in Wave 2, so 65 new participants were added
to the sample. Wave 3 (2001–2002), when respondents were between
the ages of 18 and 26 years old, consisted of in-home interviews with
Wave 1 respondents and their partners (N=15,170). Wave 4 (2007–
2008), when respondents were between the ages of 23 and 32 years old,
aims to re-interview 85% of the original sample from Wave 1 (approxi-
mately N=17,000).
Data and variables vary across waves, and not all variables are
included in all waves. As a whole, Add Health contains variables such
as those pertaining to sexual activity, sexual preference, pregnancy,
contraception use, and sexually transmitted diseases; drug and alcohol
use; accessibility to a gun at home; suicide, including thoughts, attempts,
and friends and family members who have committed or attempted
suicide; violent victimization; physical assaults; weapons-carrying; delin-
quent behavior; crime involvement, such as the adolescents’ involve-
ment in and interaction with crime including age of first encounter,
number of arrests before the age of 18 and charges, cases in a juvenile
delinquent court, probation, length of probation, and time in jail; and
satisfaction with one’s neighborhood, its perceived safety, and whether
the neighborhood includes physical fitness or recreation centers.
Early health measures include nutrition and diet, and disability and
illness. The health measures regarding disability and diet contain infor-
mation on physical disabilities that limit everyday activities, antibiotics
for disabilities, diagnoses of cancer, asthma, depression, diabetes (age
at diagnosis), seizures in the past 12 months, high blood pressure, and
hypertension. Wave 3 also provides information on retrospective
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and inheritable health
conditions.
Other measures cover gambling, and, for example, whether gambling
caused problems with friends and family; intimate relationships, such as
the ideal relationships and how the respondents met their significant
 Secondary Datasets 79

others; and education and school-based experiences, such as happiness

at school, post-secondary institution attended, degree received, and field
studied. Wave 4 focuses on how biology relates to social, behavioral,
psychological, and environmental processes of human development, and
includes more information pertaining to young adult life. For instance,
data include financial support from parents, siblings, and friends; roman-
tic relationships; marital history; childbearing and health conditions of
children; self-esteem, loneliness, and depression; civic participation and
citizenship; obstacles to educational goals; interpersonal and occupa-
tional stressors; and balance between work and family. Biological data,
collected noninvasively, include DNA, height, weight, saliva samples,
and various cardiovascular measures.
Add Health contains an extensive list of variables that provide infor-
mation on adolescent knowledge of pregnancy and sexually transmitted
diseases, particularly AIDS, genital herpes, and gonorrhea. Wave 3 con-
tains information on sexual experiences, including age of first act of
vaginal intercourse; number of partners in your life and in the past
12 months; use of contraception, particularly condoms and birth control
pills; perception of your partners’ STD status; attraction to females and
males; self-proclaimed sexual preference; parent’s knowledge of child’s
sexual preferences; paying another for sex and vice versa; and partners’
needle use. There is also information on whether the respondent has
particular STDs, including HIV infection or AIDS.
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data has been
used in numerous ways and seen in many recent publications, such as to
examine sex outcomes, such as the effect of gender and acculturation on
adolescents’ first sexual experience (Hahm & Lahiff, 2006), the effect of
television on teenage sexual initiation (Ashby, Edmonson, & Arcari,
2006), the effects of partner discussions of contraception and STDs
(Ryan, Franzetta, Manlove, & Holcombe, 2007), and the influence of
religion on premarital pregnancies (Adamczyk & Felson, 2008). Add
Health data have also been used to study topics involving drug abuse,
such as the effects of cigarette smoking on adolescent depression (Munafò,
Hitsman, Rende, Metcalfe, & Niaura, 2008), the result of religion on sub-
stance abuse (Rostosky, Danner, & Riggle, 2007), the correlation between
access to alcohol, drugs, and guns at home to health-risk behavior
(Swahn & Hammig, 2000), and the consequences of using illegal drugs,
such as marijuana (Timberlake et al., 2007) and crystal methamphetamine
80 Secondary Data Analysis

(Iritani, Hallfors, & Bauer, 2007) faced by young people. Health out-
comes have also been researched, including the effects of rurality and
ethnicity on child physical illness (Wickrama, Elder, & Abraham, 2007);
self-esteem in Chinese, Filipino, and European-American adolescents
(Russell, Crockett, Shen, & Lee, 2008); the risk of suicide because of
sexual orientation (Silenzio, Pena, Duberstein, Cerel, & Know, 2007);
and the relationship between obesity and immigrants (Popkin & Udry,
1998). Add Health data have been used to study the effects of race, such
as the multiracial adolescent’s choice of friends (Doyle & Kao, 2007) and
interracial and intraracial relationships (Wang, Kao, & Joyner, 2006),
and issues of violence, such as the effect of sports and peers on young
male violence (Kreager, 2007), the connection between same-sex orien-
tation and violence (Russell, Franz, & Driscoll, 2001), and child maltreat-
ment and domestic partner violence (Fang & Corso, 2007). Other topics
studied include the relationships among sports, gender, and academic
achievement (Videon, 2002), research on twins (Horwitz, Videon,
Schmitz, & Davis, 2003), the correlation between incarceration and
intergenerational social exclusion (Foster & Hagan, 2007) and the con-
tribution of environment to child ADHD (Haberstick et al., 2007).
Select Add Health data are available for public use, while other data
are restricted to protect the safety and privacy of the respondents. The
public-use data contain a random selection of half of the core sample and
half of the oversampled African Americans who have a parent with a
college degree. These public-use datasets are available on CD-Rom in
ASCII format and are distributed by Sociometrics. The codebooks for
the Add Health data are available at http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/
addhealth/codebooks.

NATIONAL LONGITUDINAL SURVEYS (NLS)

The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) consists of a series of five
cohorts, selected by age group, who are followed over a period of decades.
Data collection on first cohort (NLS of Older Men) began in 1966 and
ended in 1990. Data collection on the most recent cohort (NLSY97)
began in 1997 and continues today. The NLS collects information about
participants’ labor market experiences as well as the factors that influ-
ence those experiences, such as assets and income, education, training,
 Secondary Datasets 81

family demographics and composition, attitudes and aspirations, and

health conditions and behaviors. The NLS makes it possible to look at
economic, familial, personal, and social changes over a lifetime. The NLS
was originally funded by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to collect
information on labor market experiences of different groups of people.
Each of the NLS cohorts, when weighted, is nationally representative
of the population born between the years specified by each cohort and
living in the United States when interviews started for that cohort. Each
cohort has additional specific issues pertaining to representativeness.
The NLS Older and Young Men and NLS Mature and Young Women are
representative only of the civilian and noninstitutionalized population.
Researchers also oversampled Black men and women. The NLSY79
includes three subsamples, the first of which is a cross-sectional sample
representative for the civilian, noninstituionalized population. The
second subsample consists of civilian Black and Hispanic youths and
low-income youths, while the third includes a sample of military youths.
The Children of the NLSY79 is representative of children born to parents
who themselves were born between 1957 and 1964 and who were living
in the United States in 1978. The NLSY97 includes a cross-sectional
sample of youth, including those in institutions, as well as an additional
sample of Black and Hispanic youths.
Researchers collected data from each cohort using a mixture of mail,
in-person and, by 2002, mostly telephone interviews. These interviews
collected core data from each cohort as well as topical data from select
cohorts in select years. The NLS Handbook (http://www.bls.gov/nls/
handbook/nlshndbk.htm) provides details about which cohorts and
years were asked in which questions.
The cohorts include NLS of Older and Young Men, NLS of Mature
and Young Women, NLS Youth of 79, Children of the NLSY79, and NLS
Youth of 97. Sample sizes vary across cohorts. Researchers used a multi-
stage, stratified probability sampling methodology to create the sample
for each of the cohorts. The cohorts are not mutually exclusive, and a
household could have more than one respondent in each cohort or have
respondents in different cohorts. These sibling and partner pairs are not
nationally representative, however.
The NLS of Older and Young Men, one of the original cohorts, con-
sisted of two cohorts surveys. The first sampled men aged 45 to 59 years
who were beginning to leave, or think about leaving, the work force and
82 Secondary Data Analysis

enter retirement (original N=5,020). Twelve surveys were conducted

between 1966 and 1983. The National Institute of Aging conducted
another survey in 1990 that consisted of interviews with the widows or
living relatives of the deceased sample members and a record check of
causes of death. The second survey, of younger men, included men aged
14 to 24 years who were finishing school and making decisions or enter-
ing the work force, military, or further education (original N=5,225).
Twelve surveys were conducted between 1966 and 1981.
The NLS of Mature and Young Women, the other of the original
cohorts, comprises two cohorts. The first consists of women aged 30 to
44 who were returning to the work force after raising their children
(original N=5,083). Twenty-one surveys were conducted between 1967
and 2003. The second cohort includes young women aged 14 to 24 who
were finishing school; entering the military, the work force or further
education; and starting their own families. Twenty-two interviews were
conducted between 1968 and 2003.
The NLS Youth of 79 (NLSY79) consists of a cohort of youths aged
14 to 22, born between 1957 and 1964 (original N=5,159). At this age,
the youths are transitioning from school to work, the military, or further
education and starting their own families. Annual surveys began in 1979
and, in 1994, changed to biennial surveys, which continue to the present,
for a total of 22 surveys to date. The cohort includes two additional sup-
plemental samples. The first includes youths who are Black or Hispanic
and those of low income. Surveys with these supplemental samples ended
after 1990. The second include military youths who were interviewed
through the 1984 surveys.
The Children and Young Adults of NLSY79 is a supplemental data
file of the NLSY79 that consists of interviews with the mothers in NLS79
and their children. When the children become 15 years old, they take a
survey similar to that which their mothers take. Biennial data collection
began in 1986 (children) and 1994 (young adults) and continues today
for a total of 11 and seven surveys to date, respectively.
The NLSY97 is a cohort of youths aged 12 to 16, born between 1980
and 1984. Like the youths in the other NLS surveys, they are moving
from school to work, the military, or further education and starting
their own families. This cohort includes an oversampling of Black and
Hispanic youth. Annual surveys began in 1997 and continue today,
 Secondary Datasets 83

with a total of 11 surveys to date (1997–2007). In these interviews, some

questions were asked of parents if the child was relatively young.
It is difficult to discuss the variables in the many National Longitudinal
Surveys because there are so many versions of the data. I write about
them in mostly general terms here. The core variables include labor
market experiences, training, schooling, physical and mental health,
household composition, marital histories, children/dependents, family
assets and income from particular sources, geographic residence, and
receipt of government assistance. Some important childhood variables
include school records/behaviors/aptitude/intelligence scores, participa-
tion in Head Start or other preschool programs, and attitudes/
aspirations/psychological well-being. For workers, content includes
work-related discrimination, week-by-week work histories, retirement
plans, pension eligibility, and pension plans. Other variables include
adverse life events, volunteer and leisure activities, sexual activity,
alcohol/cigarette/substance abuse, delinquency, criminal activities and
arrest records, household chores, child care, and care of the ill and dis-
abled. Some cohort datasets include additional variables or supplemental
datasets with information about adoption, foster care and living arrange-
ments, crime and violence, quality of the home environment, histories of
public assistance, child development and prenatal care, and support net-
work information for women. Children of the NLSY79 includes child
development variables to assess vocabulary, verbal skills, reading, math,
memory, behavior problems, temperament, self-perception, and motor
and social development. NLSY97 includes information about how
respondents spend their time each day, such as doing homework, read-
ing, or lessons.
Health variables include health status and change over time; types of
health problems and conditions; hospitalization and care received; height
and weight; whether health problems resulted from injuries (on or off
the job); assistance with daily living activities; use and frequency of
emergency medical assistance; hospitalization; death information; work
information as it relates to health (e.g., environment, satisfaction, condi-
tions); health of respondents’ parents; and, for women, whether discrim-
ination based on health was experienced at work, information about
menopause and hormone treatment, driving habits, and pregnancy and
child information. NLSY97 also includes variables about respondents’
84 Secondary Data Analysis

perceptions of their weight and and how they manage any perceived
weight problems, and experience with events such as violent victimiza-
tion, homelessness, hospitalization of a household member, incarcera-
tion or unemployment of an adult, and use of medication. In addition to
many of the above variables, Children of the NLSY79 includes informa-
tion about the number and type of accidents/injuries/illnesses; timing of
health and dental check ups; assistance with behavioral, emotional or
mental problems; visits to psychiatrist/psychologist/counselor; and use
of medications to control behavior.
Geographic and environmental data include current region of resi-
dence, location of job and birthplace; environmental characteristics such
as labor force size and unemployment rate, relocation dates and reasons,
and length of time at residences; perceptions about quality of neigh-
borhood; and presence of neighborhood problems such as crime and
violence.
Geocode information, down to the census tract level, is available for
some of the NLS data (NLSY79 (1979-2002), NLSY97 Young Adult
(1994–2002) and NLS97 (Rounds 1–7)). For NLSY97, information is
available for each college that the person attended, along with the loca-
tion of the school. Special contracts must be approved and signed in
order to use such data. Information on obtaining the geocoded data can
be found at http://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsfaqs.htm#anch2.
NLSY79 includes information about involvement and income from
activities such as truancy, drug use and dealing, vandalism, shoplifting,
and robbery, and involvement in the criminal justice system (arrest,
police contact). NLS provides data about experience with events such as
violent victimization, homelessness, hospitalization of a household
member, adult in jail or unemployed, and parental divorce
One precaution about the NLS is that income data for the NLS are
sometimes difficult to use. According to Moore, Pedlow, Krishnamurty,
& Wolter (2000) (http://www.nlsinfo.org/ordering/display_db.php3),
22 percent of the data in the 1997 NLS of Youth is either missing or 0,
with 0 indicating missing values. Other NLS datasets also have large pro-
portions of cases with missing values. Unlike some other datasets, the
NLS does not impute income data. It is possible to use components of
income information to determine income for those with missing data,
but imputation will be needed to do this because some or many of the
components of income have missing information.
 Secondary Datasets 85

Researchers have used the NLS to do sibling studies, and they use
fixed effect with sibling techniques in these studies (Ashenfelter &
Zimmerman, 1997; Fletcher and Wolfe, 2008; Ven Den Oord & Rowe,
1998).
Researchers have used NLS cohorts to study a variety of questions
related to employment and income. For instance, studies examine earn-
ing, skill, and market differences for men of different races (Gabriel,
2004), the relationship between cognitive skills and wages (Mitra, 2000),
job satisfaction and gender (Donohue & Heywood, 2004) and racial
discrimination and wages (Eckstein & Wolpin, 1999). Others study the
relationships between poverty and math and reading achievement
(Eamon, 2002), school and earnings (Ginther, 2000), and childhood
neighborhood poverty and adult employment (Holloway & Mulherin,
2004). Researchers have also studied health-related factors such as the
relationship between obesity and wages (Cawley, 2004) and predictors of
work-related injuries and illnesses (Dembe, Erickson, & Delbos, 2004).
One researcher looked at volunteerism across cohorts (Rotolo & Wilson,
2004).
Researchers have also used the NLS cohorts to study a variety of
health-related variables. Some studies look at substance abuse, such as
the consequences of binge drinking (Jennison, 2004) and the relation-
ship between alcohol and work-related injuries (Veazie & Smith, 2000).
Another researcher looked at the influence of childhood conditions on
mortality (Hayward & Gorman, 2004). Other researchers examined
child health and well-being through studies looking at the impact of
absentee parents (Lang & Zagorsky, 2001), spanking (Slade & Wissow,
2004), television watching (Christakis, Zimmerman, Digiuseppe, &
McCarty, 2004) and obesity (Strauss, 2000).
Further studies examine factors related to crime and imprisonment,
such as the relationships between crime and the market (Gould, Weinberg,
& Mustard, 2002), father absence and youth incarceration (Harper &
McLanahan, 2004), and race, class and incarceration (Pettit & Western,
2004).
Data are collected on both adults and children, and there are several
Bureau of Labor Statistics websites that give good listings of the variables
available for each of the datasets (for example, for NLS of older men, see
http://www.bls.gov/nls/handbook/2005/selvarom.pdf; for the NLS for
younger men, see http://www.bls.gov/nls/handbook/2005/selvarym.pdf;
86 Secondary Data Analysis

for the NLS for mature women, see http://www.bls.gov/nls/handbook/

2005/selvarmw.pdf; for the NLS for young women, see http://www.bls.
gov/nls/handbook/2005/selvarmw.pdf; for the NLS for youth, 1979, see
http://www.bls.gov/nls/handbook/2005/selvary79.pdf; for the NLS for
youth, 1997, see http://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy97.htm). The codebook for
the NLS of Youth, 1997 cohort is available at http://www.nlsinfo.org/
nlsy97/nlsdocs/nlsy97/questionnaires/R1Youth-final.pdf.
Public data for the 1997 NLSY are available online for downloading
of specific variables for all 11 waves of the data. This site can be found at
https://www.nlsinfo.org/investigator/pages/search.jsp.
Detailed information about the NLS is available through the Bureau
of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/nls). Data for the many NLS
versions are available at SODA POP, at The Pennsylvania State University,
http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/nls. Permission must be
granted from the Population Research Institute at Penn State to
download these data. Data are also downloadable from the NLS Product
Availability Center (http://www.nlsinfo.org).

NATIONAL MEDICAL EXPENDITURE SURVEY (NMES)/MEDICAL EXPENDITURE

PANEL SURVEY (MEPS)
The National Medical Expenditure Survey consists of a series of surveys
that collect information on medical expenditures and health insurance
costs. The surveys, some of which contain a series of surveys within them,
include the National Medical Care Expenditure Survey (NMCES, also
known as NMES-1, 1977), the National Medical Care Utilization and
Expenditure Survey (NMCUES, 1980), the National Medical Expenditure
Survey (1987), and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (1996-2008).
The NMCES was conducted in 1977 by the National Center for
Health Services Research, which is now called the Agency for Health Care
Policy and Research. This study consists of three surveys. The Household
Survey includes 13,500 randomly selected households and collected data
pertaining to demographics, medical use, and expenditures in six rounds
during1977 and 1978. The Health Insurance/Employer Survey supple-
mented and verified the Household Survey by surveying the individuals
and organizations identified as private insurance providers in the
Household Survey. The Medical Provider Survey collected data from
 Secondary Datasets 87

13,500 medical care providers, identified in the Household Survey, per-

taining to patient visits, diagnoses, expenditures, and payments.
The National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey
(NMCUES), conducted in 1980 by the National Center for Health
Statistics and the Health Care Financing Administration, gathered infor-
mation on health, access to and use of medical services, health insurance
coverage, and charges and payments. The sample is representative of
noninstitutionalized civilians in the United States in 1980. The NMCUES
consists of three surveys. The National Household Component sampled
6,000 randomly selected households. The State Medicaid Household
Component sampled 4,000 households from the Medicaid eligibility files
from California, Michigan, New York, and Texas, containing 1,000
households from each state. Both surveys included five rounds of inter-
views in 14 months during 1980 and 1981. The Administrative Records
Component gathered information on program eligibility and Medicare
and Medicaid payments. The NMCUES collects information on vari-
ables such as annual number of bed and work-loss days, medical and
emergency room visits, hospital overnights, and prescription medicines;
types of medical services received; charges and out-of-pocket costs for a
variety of medical services and prescription medicines; medical condi-
tions; dental services and costs; insurance type; and work and income
characteristics.
The National Medical Expenditure Survey of 1987, conducted by the
Agency for Health Services and Research, included three surveys. The
Household Survey, sampled with a stratified multistage area probability
design, includes 35,000 individual in 14,000 households and is represen-
tative of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States.
Researchers oversampled poor and low-income families, the elderly, the
functionally impaired, and Black and Hispanic individuals. Participants
participated in four personal and telephone interviews and provided
information pertaining to employment, health insurance, and medical
expenditures.
The 1996–2008 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey includes any-
where from 9,000 to 14,600 households, and 21,000 to more than 37,000
individuals, in any year in the sample. Each group of respondents is sur-
veyed for two years, with 12 panels through 2007. Thus, in any given
year, two panels are being surveyed, one in its first year and another in its
second year.
88 Secondary Data Analysis

Part of the 1987 NMES is the Institutionalized Population Survey,

which gathered information on nursing and personal care facilities,
including those for the mentally retarded, and the people admitted to
them. The sample includes 810 nursing and personal care homes and
691 facilities for the mentally retarded, sampled from the Inventory of
Long-Term Care Places (1986) using specific criteria. Data was collected
from facility administrators, caregivers, next of kin or other knowledge-
able respondents, and Medicare claims information. The survey includes
variables relating to medical, residence and institutional history, insur-
ance coverage, institutional characteristics (e.g., size, type, ownership,
and certification status) and expenditures for services rendered.
Another part of the 1987 NMES is the Survey of American Indians
and Alaskan Natives (SAIAN), conducted in collaboration with Indian
Health Service (IHS), which used a stratified area probability sampling
process to create a sample of 7,071 individuals residing in households
eligible to receive HIS services. The SAIAN uses the same data collection
tools and procedures as the Household Survey, except that there were
only three waves of data interviews, questions involving long-term care
were omitted, and questions involving IHS facilities and traditional med-
icine were added. Approximately 40% of interviews occurred entirely in
the respondent’s native language.
The longitudinal MEPS data are used to estimate health care usage
and expenditures for individuals over a two-year period, using five or six
rounds of interviews. The data track health care coverage, usage (includ-
ing homeopathic and acupuncture treatments), behaviors, and expendi-
tures; those using public health insurance; and employment, income,
and assets. Respondents are asked when and where they went to receive
care, such as hospitals, physicians, and pharmacies. The data contain
information from those providers that indicate what procedures were
performed, what conditions were treated, how much was spent, and who
paid (Were procedures paid for by the patient or by insurance, and how
much did each pay?). Confidential data files are also available for use
with the public-use MEPS files. Some of these confidential data files
include household-insurance linked files for 1996–1999 and 2001;
a nursing home component for 1996; a medical provider component,
in which detailed charges and payments from hospitals, physicians,
home health agencies, and pharmacies are included; an area resource file,
with variables for the county of residence of the household, that includes
 Secondary Datasets 89

indicators of health facilities and health status; and tax simulations using
the National Bureau of Economic Research’s TAXSIM to estimate taxes
paid by households.
Online data queries are available for the MEPS for the years 1996–
2007. These queries can give simple statistics for such variables as per-
ceived overall and mental health, poverty status, and health insurance
status, as well as medical utilization and expenditures. Go to http://www.
meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/data_stats/MEPSnetHC.jsp to use this data tool.
Researchers have used NMES/MEPS to explore treatment trends for
anxiety disorders (Olfson, Marcus, Wan, & Geissler, 2004), attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (Olfson, Gameroff, Marcus, & Jensen,
2003), and psychotherapy (Olfson, Marcus, Druss, & Pincus, 2002).
Others have explored medical expenses among the elderly (Selden &
Banthin, 2003), expenses related to physical activity (Wang & Brown,
2004), and smoking (Johnson, Dominici, Griswold, & Zeger, 2003),
as well as changes in health care utilization and expenditures for children
and youth over a period of time (Simpson et al., 2004). Researchers have
used NMES to study employment distortions resulting from the under-
writing behavior of health insurance companies (Kapur, 2004) and the
relationship between health insurance and employee commitment
(Crocker & Moran, 2003). Others have explored the impact of tax policy
on health insurance purchases (Ketsche, 2004) and the use of home
health care and associated costs after the Balanced Budget Act of 1997
(Spector, Cohen, & Pesis-Katz, 2004).
NMES/MEPS data are available through the Inter-University
Consortium for Political and Social Research (www.icpsr.umich.edu).
The NMES surveys are relatively old now, but they have been have been
publically released with projections from the data to years 1996 and 2005
(Moeller et al., 2002) (see http://www.meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/data_
files/publications/mr13/mr13.pdf for a full explanation of the updates).
The MEPS is current (through 2008 at the time of this writing) and can
be found at http://www.meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb.

NATIONAL SURVEY OF AMERICAN FAMILIES (NSAF)

The National Survey of American Families (NSAF) is a collection of
three cross-sectional household surveys focusing on the economic,
90 Secondary Data Analysis

social, and health well-being of low-income children, adults, and fami-

lies. Researchers collected data in 1997, 1999, and 2002 from more than
40,000 randomly selected respondents in each year. The respondents
ranged in age from 16 to 64 years old. The NSAF includes in family
responses unmarried partners, their respective children, and the relatives
by blood, marriage, and adoption of each of the partners and their
children. Designed as part of larger study by The Urban Institute, the
NSAF gathers information useful in exploring the impact of devolution
of social programs, especially Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF) programs, on the economic, social, and health well-being of
children, adults and families.
The sample was drawn from two sources: over-sampled data from
13 focus states and supplemental data from the rest of the country. The
13 focus states are Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas,
Washington, and Wisconsin. These states were chosen because they
varied among themselves on different characteristics such as size, loca-
tion, fiscal capacity, population needs, and government service delivery
while at the same time closely resembling the national population.
The NSAF is nationally representative of noninstitutionalized civilian
individuals who are under 65 years of age. It is also representative at the
state level for the focus states. Weights are provided to make the sample
representative for different units of analysis (child, adult, and family).
Respondents participated in a telephone interview, answering ques-
tions on a variety of well-being measures. While some specific questions
have been added, edited, or deleted across the survey years, all three sur-
veys contain the same variables categorized into 16 sections: (a) student
status of respondent; (b) health status (including physical, mental
and learning health conditions and impairments and disability status);
(c) education, educational expectation, and performance of focal child
(including participation in special education and summer school);
(d) household roster (including foster care information); (e) health care
coverage (including SCHIP and other publicly funded insurance pro-
grams); (f) health care use and access for respondent and focal child;
(g) child care arrangements (including participation in Head Start);
(h) nonresidential parent information; (i) employment and earnings;
(j) family income outside of employment income; (k) welfare program
participation; (l) education and training of respondent and spouse/
 Secondary Datasets 91

partner; (m) housing and economic hardship; (n) issues, problems,

and social services; (o) race, ethnicity and nativity; and (p) respondent
opinions about welfare, working, and raising children.
Researchers used two sampling frames to select households. The first
involved random digit dialing to screen out and select eligible house-
holds. The second involved area sampling for those households that
did not have telephones and in-person screening for eligibility. These
samples were then combined and additional within-household random
sampling followed to create two groups of respondents: adults with chil-
dren under 18 years old living with them (Option A) and adults who
were not living with children under 18 years old (Option B). Within
Option A, two focal children were randomly selected from all the chil-
dren under 18 in the household. The researcher then found the most
knowledgeable adult (MKA), who could answer questions about him/
herself and his/her spouse/partner, if applicable, and the identified child.
Each focal child could have a different MKA. With Option B, researchers
sampled in two categories: households in which adults are childless and
households in which adults do not have children under 18 years old
living with them. From each group, researchers randomly selected up to
two adults between 18 and 64 years old who were not spouses/partners of
each other. These respondents participated in the interview and answered
questions about him/herself and his/her spouse/partner, if applicable.
Due to this methodology, each household could potentially have from
one to four respondents. Households without telephones participated in
the study through the use of cell phones provided by on-site research
assistants.
The Urban Institute publishes a series of reports, Snapshots of
America’s Families that summarize the institute’s analysis of key
measures and trends. Given the wide array of well-being measures and
different units of analysis contained in the NSAF data, researchers can
use the dataset to examine the relationships and trends among different
forms of well-being and different types of people. Additionally, the data
can be coupled with national and state policy information to examine
impacts of policy on quality of life for those same people or groups of
people. The Urban Institute provides information on state welfare rules
with its Welfare Rules Database. In this, researchers can examine how
welfare rules have changed within and among states since 1996 (http://
anfdata.urban.org/wrd/WRDWelcome.cfm). Researchers use this
92 Secondary Data Analysis

database even if not working with the NSAF data because it provides
information that can be examined on its own or used with other data-
bases, with data merges by county or state.
NSAF provides data on welfare program participation, such as
receipt, spells, and characteristics of AFDC/TANF, food stamp (FS), and
Supplemental Security Income (SSI); receipt, reductions, and why left
welfare (welfare cut off because: earnings increased, assets were too high,
did not follow program rules, reached end of time limit, not a U.S. citi-
zen, or other); inquiries for government assistance such as TANF, food
stamps, child care subsidies, and Medicaid; the completion of tax returns
and the receipt of the Earned Income Tax Credit; and receipt of child
support payments and free or reduced-cost breakfast or lunch programs.
It also includes variables with respondent opinions about welfare. In
addition, NSAF provides information on the education and training of
the respondent and his or her spouse/partner, including unpaid work for
the government under public assistance programs, receipt of education
vouchers, and participation in job training.
Variables also provide information on respondent’s attitudes and
feelings (such as nervousness or peacefulness), as well as feelings toward
children (such as caring for them or anger towards them) and children’s
activities and problems (such as getting along with others, concentrating
and feeling unhappy, worthless or nervous, trouble sleeping, and cheat-
ing); parental behaviors (such as reading to children or taking them on
outings); and degree to which the respondent is a risk taker.
Researchers have used NSAF to examine a variety of influences on
different well-being outcomes. Some studies explore the relationship
between family structure and the well-being of children and adults.
These studies look at well-being as influenced by parental marriage and
cohabitation (Brown, 2004; Manning & Brown 2006; Willetts &
Maroules, 2005), kin and nonkin foster care (Ehrle & Geen, 2002), non-
residential fathers (Garasky & Stewart, 2007) and grandmothers who are
child care givers (Mills, Gomez-Smith, & De Leon, 2005; Park, 2006).
Other studies focus on health-related outcomes. One such study
focuses on trends in health care (Sturm, Andreyeva, Pincus, & Tanielian,
2005), while another looks at trends in employer-provided insurance
(Shen & Long, 2006). Other studies examine the relationships between
health insurance and Medicaid, and health care access and use (Busch &
Horwitz, 2004; Garrett & Zuckerman, 2005; Long, Coughlin, &
 Secondary Datasets 93

King, 2005; Long, King, & Coughlin, 2006; Shen & Zuckerman, 2005)
and out-of-pocket costs (Shen & McFeeters, 2006). Several studies exam-
ine the relationship of family characteristics, family health, and health
care access and use. This set of research studies well-being as it relates to
stressful family environments (Fairbrother, Kenney, Hanson, & Dubay,
2005) and immigrant families (Huang, Yu, & Ledsky, 2006; Yu, Huang,
Schwalberg, & Kogan, 2005; Potocky-Tripodi, 2006).
Additional studies examine the relationship between family and per-
sonal characteristics and child care (Parish & Cloud, 2006), as well as the
relationship between policy, especially welfare policy, and well-being
(Zimmerman, 2003), and policy and household economics and housing
(Robbins & Barcus, 2004; Heintze, Berger, Naidich, & Meyers, 2006).
Data are available through The Urban Institute (www.urban.org/
center/anf/nsaf.cfm) for all three data collection years and for all three
levels of analysis: child, adult and family. The specific number of obser-
vations varies based on the unit of analysis. The user guide provides
detailed low-income observation data by the 13 focus states and the bal-
ance of the nation. Some survey questions are asked only of randomly
selected adults from the sampled adult pool, and therefore researchers
cannot create valid household aggregates. Through the ICPSR, online
analysis of the data is available for the focal child, parents, and other
adults, by year, through the Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA),
developed by the computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) at
the University of California, Berkeley.

NATIONAL SURVEY OF CHILD AND ADOLESCENT WELL-BEING (NSCAW)

The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW),
sponsored by the Administration of Children, Youth, and Families of the
Department of Health and Human Services, is a study of children in the
child welfare system who are at risk of abuse and neglect. The study col-
lects data from more than 5,000 children who come in contact with child
welfare systems, the pathways and services in the systems, and the short-
and long-term effects of system involvement. The NSCAW covers a
wide range of topics, such as neighborhoods, cognitive achievement,
social functioning, delinquency, and sexual behavior. The study collects
data from children, parents and caregivers, teachers, and caseworkers,
94 Secondary Data Analysis

in addition to administrative records. Baseline data collection occurred

from the fall of 1999 through April 2001. Follow-up data was collected
12 months, 18 months, and 36 months after April 2001, with a fourth
follow-up in 2005. The data is nationally representative for those who
enter the child welfare system and who are white, African American, or
Hispanic.
The sample was selected using composite sampling. The sample
includes more than 5,501 children from infancy to age 14 who entered
the child welfare system between October 1999 and December 2000.
They came from 97 child welfare agencies across the country and repre-
sent both open and unopened cases investigated by local child protective
services agencies. The core sample is supplemented by 727 children who
have been in foster care for a longer period of time. The study oversam-
pled for infants, victims of sexual abuse, and children receiving foster
care. The study attempted to evenly sample for age, gender, and ethnic-
ity, and it includes data about the severity of abuse. Severity of abuse is
measured by the type of abuse rather than the effect of the abuse. Race
and ethnicity is limited to white, Black and Hispanic.
Data were collected by computer-assisted personal interviews
(CAPI) for the children, parents, caregivers, and caseworkers. Teachers
were surveyed by mail, with computer-assisted phone interviews to
follow-up on nonrespondents. The children were selected by computer-
assisted programs, which also helped to collect data from administrative
records.
The child interviews inquired about school achievement, behavior
problems, relationships with parents and peers, cognitive skills, and
exposure to violence. Children 11 years and older also were asked about
delinquent behavior, exposure to sexual behavior, substance abuse, and
maltreatment history. The caregiver survey collects data on children, the
caregiver, and the family and community. Child variables include health
and disabilities, social skills, temperament, and disruptions in living
environment. Caregiver information includes mental health and sub-
stance use, relationship with the child, disciplinary actions, and physical
health. Family and community information concerns the neighborhood
environment, domestic violence, and parental criminal involvement.
The local and state child welfare agency survey inquired about such
topics as agency services and staff. The state survey also collected data
on local-state agency collaboration. The caseworker survey, at baseline,
 Secondary Datasets 95

collected data about the risk assessment of children and families, case-
worker characteristics, and services for children and their families.
Follow-up interviews collected information pertaining to the history
before and since the case report and the caseworker involvement with the
child and family. The teacher survey included topics such as school
socialization, interpersonal aggression, school absences, home-teachers
contacts, and special education needs.
The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being data has
been used to explore topics such as mental health (Burns et al., 2004),
chronic conditions (Jee et al., 2006), and behavioral problems (Barth,
Lloyd, Green, James, Leslie, & Landsverk, 2007; Grogan-Kaylo, Ruffolo,
Ortega, & Clarke, 2008), with a particular look at behavioral issues fol-
lowing reunification after foster care (Bellamy, 2008), and the interplay
between urbanicity, child behavior problems, and poverty (Barth,
Wildfire, & Green, 2006). The data have been used to study maltreat-
ment and abuse, particularly sexual abuse (McCrae, Chapman, & Christ,
2006), the correlation between maltreatment and aggressiveness, and
delinquent behavior in adolescents (Wall & Barth, 2005), and the
relationship between intimate partner violence and child injury/use of
emergency room (Casanueva, Foshee, & Barth, 2005). Other focus areas
include parental incarceration (Hayward & DePanfilis, 2007; Phillips,
Burns, Wagner, & Barth, 2004); alcohol, drug, and mental health treat-
ment and race/ethnicity (Libby et al., 2006); social, emotional, and
academic competence (Jaffee & Gallop, 2007); police involvement in
child protective service investigation (Cross, Finkelhor, & Ormrod,
2005); and evaluating substance abuse services for child welfare clients
(Guo, Barth, & Gibbons, 2006).
Data have been separated into general-use data, stripped of identify-
ing information and geographic detail, and restricted-use data. To obtain
any of the NSCAW data, researchers must fill out and agree to the data
licensing agreement. The people eligible for the agreement are faculty
and nonstudent research personnel at institutions with an Institutional
Review Board/Human Subjects Review Committee (IRB). For non-U.S.
residents or organizations wishing to obtain the data, applications will be
handled on a case-to-case basis, and it may be more costly to obtain a
licensing agreement. Using restricted-use data, in addition to the licens-
ing agreement, requires an application, a data protection plan, and unan-
nounced on-site inspections of the research facility. More information
96 Secondary Data Analysis

about data availability and access is available through the National Data
Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, www.ndacan.cornell.edu. The
codebook for the data is available at http://www.ndacan.cornell.
edu/NDACAN/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/092_Intro_to_NSCAW_
Wave_1.pdf.

NICHD STUDY OF EARLY CHILD CARE AND YOUTH DEVELOPMENT (SECCYD)

The Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD),
supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, is a longitudinal study examining the relationship between
child care and child development. Started in 1991, the study follows a
starting sample of 1,364 children, from 10 different locations in the
United States, as they develop to age 14 and 15 years old. The study uses
multiple methods, including interviews, questionnaires, testing, and
trained observers, to collect data on various aspects of child develop-
ment, including language, social, emotional, and intellectual develop-
ment, behavioral problems and physical health.
The original sample children were selected through a conditionally
random sampling process, in order to obtain demographic diversity.
Of the mothers in the original sample, 60% planned on going back to
work or school full-time in the child’s first year, 20% planned on part-
time work or going to school part time, and 20% planned on staying
home. Excluded from the sample were children with mothers under
18 years of age, families who planned on moving out of the area within
the first three years of the child’s birth, children with disabilities at birth,
and children with mothers who were not sufficiently conversant in
English.
The study is conducted in four phases. Phase I (1991–1994) assessed
the original sample, aged birth to three years (N=1,364) and focused on
observing child care and child development in the first three years of life.
Data collection instruments include a child behavior checklist, a family
finance interview, a home inventory and a love-and-relationship ques-
tionnaire. Data was collected at 1, 6, 15, 24, and 36 months of age. Phase
II (1994–2000) assessed the children from 54 months to first grade
(N=1,100), continuing the child care and development observations as
well as the transition into elementary school. Data collection instruments
 Secondary Datasets 97

include a child-parent relationship scale completed at home when the

child was in kindergarten, and in the lab when in first grade; parent
involvement and physical environment checklist completed at 54 months
in child care; and friendship-interaction coding done at 54 months in
child care and in school in first grade. Phase III (2000 and 2005) assesses
the children from second to sixth grades (N=1,100), focusing on experi-
ences in early and middle childhood and how those affect development.
Data collection instruments included child questionnaire, completed at
home in fifth grade; and a mother questionnaire, one completed in
the lab in third and in fifth grade. A depression inventory is done in the
home by the child in fifth grade and again by the child and a friend in the
lab in sixth grade, and family emotional expressiveness is done at home
by the mother and father. Phase IV (current) assesses the children at
the ages of 14 and 15 (N=1,000 plus) and concentrates on how early
experiences combined with maturational factors in adolescence affect
health, intellectual achievement, social relationships, and transitions.
A list of instruments used and reliability scores are given at these web
sites: https://secc.rti.org/Phase2InstrumentDoc.pdf, https://secc.rti.org/
Phase3InstrumentDoc.pdf, https://secc.rti.org/Phase4InstrumentDoc.
pdf, and https://secc.rti.org/MeasuresPhase1_4Chart.pdf.
The data collected in the NICHD Study of Early Childcare and Youth
Development have been used in numerous other studies and publica-
tions. These data have been used to examine the reasons for choosing
child care (Peyton, Jacobs, O’Brien, & Roy, 2001), the traits of infants
with and without special needs (Booth & Kelly, 1998), the correlation
between child care and accidental injury (Schwebel, Brezausek, & Belsky,
2006), the difference between United States and Korean child care pro-
grams (Clarke-Stewart, Lee, Allhusen, Kim, & McDowell, 2006), and the
effects of child care by grandparents in the first few years after birth
(Vandell, McCartney, Owen, Booth, & Clarke-Stewart, 2003). The data
have also been used to study certain health outcomes, such as the correla-
tion between neighborhoods and weight issues (Lumeng, Appugliese,
Cabral, Bradley, & Zuckerman, 2006) and infant sleeping disorders due
to attachment to mother (McNamara, Belsky, & Fearon, 2002). Other
attachment issues have been studied, including maternal caution upon
their children entering kindergarten (Early et al., 2002) and how
maternal attachment affects children’s friend-making abilities (Lucas-
Thompson & Clarke-Stewart, 2007). Studies examine behavioral issues,
98 Secondary Data Analysis

such as the association between teacher’s relationships with children and

behavioral issues (Stuhlman & Pianta, 2002). Others explore the involve-
ment of parents (Whiteside-Mansell, Bradley, & Rakow, 2000), effects of
divorce (Clarke-Stewart, Vandell, McCartney, Owen, & Booth, 2000)
and the effects of marital intimacy (O’Brien & Peyton, 2002). NICHD
data have been used to study family income-to-needs and how changes
affect children (Dearing, McCartney, & Taylor, 2001) and depressive
symptoms in women (Dearing, Taylor, & McCartney, 2004). Other
research includes the study of the effect of welfare on good child care
(Wolfe, & Vandell, 2002), the correlation between gender and cognition
in 3-year olds (O’Brien et al., 2000), and the association between socio-
economic status and language ability in 3-year-olds (Raviv, Kessenich, &
Morrison, 2004).
Data and variable descriptions are available through the SECCYD
website, http://secc.rti.org. The data can only be obtained by filling out
an application, in order to protect the privacy and rights of the respon-
dents. Once the requests are completed, the Research Triangle Institute
(RTI) decides whether the person who requested is a qualified user. After
data are provided, the RTI monitors the use of the data.

THE PANEL STUDY OF INCOME DYNAMICS (PSID)

The PSID is a longitudinal dataset that currently covers the years 1968 to
2007. At the time of this writing, the 2009 version of the PSID is available
for only a few variables, such as measures of mortgage distress (see http://
simba.isr.umich.edu/Zips/zipSupp.aspx#MW), with the rest of the 2009
data to be released later. It is nationally representative of the nonimmi-
grant, U.S. population for men, women, children, and the families in
which they live. It allows researchers to examine intergenerational aspects
of economic, health, and family life.
The PSID comes from two samples: a cross-sectional sample assem-
bled by the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan,
a nationally representative sample drawn from the 48 contiguous United
States, which yielded roughly 3,000 families; and the second, which
comes from the Survey of Economic Opportunity (SEO), a sample of
around 2,000 low-income families, with heads of households who were
 Secondary Datasets 99

under 60 years old in Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs)

in the North and non-SMSAs in the South. These core families have been
followed since 1968, with additional children and families forming that
are now new respondents in the PSID. Thus, when a marriage splits up,
and both members of the marriage were part of the original PSID, both
partners are followed. As children grow up and have their own children,
these children are followed as well. Anyone who was an original PSID
member will always be a PSID member (although they may become a
nonrespondent), and their offspring will also be PSID members.
Nonrespondents can come back to the sample after they have left, and
the PSID attempts to contact members who have not responded. Thus,
one can look at the data and see that some members leave the sample for
some years but then return. It is possible to be a non-sample member
and be interviewed. Generally, anyone who is not in the bloodline of an
original sample member is not considered to be a sample member. Those
who are not sample members are given person numbers that differ from
sample-member person numbers (they are 170 or above, while sample-
member person numbers are below 170). In 1997, changes were made to
the PSID, such that a “refresher” sample was generated in order to better
reflect immigration to the United States since 1968. Also, instead of being
an annual survey (which it was from 1968 to 1996), it moved to a bien-
nial survey. Numerous questions were asked about the previous year
after the move to the biennial survey.
Response rates for the PSID are relatively high since its inception.
According to the Survey Research Center, response rates were around
76% in 1968, the initial year of the PSID, but grew to 88.5% in 1969,
when those who did not respond to the 1968 interview were recontacted.
Since 1969, annual response rates have been between 96.9%–98.5%.
Obviously, even with low attrition rates, these rates accumulate over
time, and by 1988, roughly 56.1% of the original individuals in the PSID
were still in the sample. Fitzgerald, Gottschalk, and Moffit (1998) find
that even though attrition rates by 1989 were at roughly 50 percent, they
found no strong evidence that this attrition has distorted the representa-
tiveness of the PSID. Response and attrition rates for the more recent
PSID waves were not found.
From 1968 to 1972, interviews were either face-to-face or mailed. From
1973 to 1993, interviews were done by telephone or through mailings.
100 Secondary Data Analysis

Since 1993, all interviews have been done by computer-assisted tele-

phone interviews. Before 1997, interviews lasted around 30 minutes;
after this time, interviews last around 70–80 minutes.
The PSID has both a family file and an individual file for those who
are aged 16 and above. For the family file, questions are generally asked
of the person deemed head of household or the wife of the head of
household. In a man-woman relationship, the head is generally deemed
the man, except in special cases, in order to conform to the U.S. Census
definition of the head of household. It is possible for a female to be a head
of household, but this is generally when there is no man in the family.
Thus, a female-headed household, with an unmarried woman and no
boyfriend who has been in the family unit for a year, is headed by the
woman. For women who are not married but have a boyfriend for more
than a year, the boyfriend is considered to be the head of household.
There is only one head of household per family, and he can have only one
wife. Starting in 1984, “wife” was also used, to designate heads (men) and
women who were living together but not married. Generally, more
extensive information is available for the head of household or the wife
in the family files of the PSID than for other individuals in the family.
Family earnings, for example, are generally given for the head of house-
hold, the wife, and for “others.” Thus, it is difficult to determine how
much is earned by which others (children, other adults in the family)
from these families files. Some of this is given in the individual files, but
these individual files, for each sample member who is over the age of 16
in the family unit, are very limited for each year.
All families have a 1968 family ID number that identifies which orig-
inal family that person came from. For every following year, the person
will have a new family ID number, depending on the family with whom
he or she resides. The person number uniquely identifies the person
within the family. If you are interested in merging variables from a par-
ticular year for families, you use the family ID number from the particu-
lar year. Generally, what you want to do to use the longitudinal nature of
the PSID is sort the data by 1968 interview number and person number
(v30001 and v30002 for years prior to 1994 and er30001 and er30002 for
subsequent years). You can then merge all years of the data together by
these two variables. If you would like only to examine heads of house-
hold (given that there is only one of these per family), you can subset the
data by head of household (by use of the relationship to head variable in
 Secondary Datasets 101

the individual file for any particular year). If you are only interested in
wives, you can subset by wives from the relationship to head variable in
the individual year files.
The PSID continues to follow all blood relatives (or adoptive chil-
dren) of those born to original PSID members. Thus, if a child were born
into an original PSID family in 1971, and becomes a head of household
or a “wife” in 1991, and has children in 1995, you can examine how
parental and grandparent outcomes affect this child, especially if you use
the Child Development Supplement to the PSID, or if you follow this
child until s/he becomes a head of household or a wife.
Because the PSID is based on the population of the United States in
1968, some groups are underrepresented in the data in later years. While
sampling weights can make the data nationally representative, sample
sizes for certain groups may be small. The Survey Research Center
attempted to increase the number of Latino observations in the data by
adding 2,000 Latino observations in 1990 (which they called the Latino
Supplemental Sample), consisting of families from Mexico, Puerto Rico,
and Mexico. While the sample did increase the number of Latinos in the
sample, it did not increase the number of other groups, such as Asians,
who are also underrepresented in the data. The Latino sample was
dropped in 1995, while 511 immigrant families were added by 1999.
As mentioned above, the PSID needs to be weighted in order to be
nationally representative. These family or individual weights are used to
take into account both differential rates of selection into the sample
as well as differential rates of attrition from the sample. The best advice
for using weights is to use the most current family weight when examin-
ing families and the most recent individual weight when examining
individuals.
The PSID collects a wide range of data, and the data that have been
collected have changed over the years. Most of the variables described
below are available in the family files for particular years of the PSID.
Some variables include employment; detailed income data, often by
month since 1984; program participation for numerous forms of
government assistance including AFDC/TANF, Medicaid, Medicare,
SSI, SS, and Food Stamps, again, by month starting in 1984; housing,
including whether living in public housing; marriage and fertility histo-
ries; food expenditures for some years; education level; education
expenses; utility expenses; and wealth variables, covering savings, stock
102 Secondary Data Analysis

and bond holdings, and total wealth including or excluding housing

values for PSID years 1984, 1989, 1994, and 1999–2007. Variables on
health include information on height and weight for both the head of
household and the wife for 1999–2005 (and from which body mass indi-
ces can be calculated); general health status for 1984–2005 for heads of
household and wives; a vast array of particular diseases for the head or
wife, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, heart attack, heart dis-
ease, and memory loss, for PSID years 1999–2007; depression and anxi-
ety in 2001–2003; health behaviors such as smoking in 1986 and
1999–2007; alcohol consumption in 1999–2007; and physical activity in
1999–2007. There is extensive information on expenditures, such as
child care, housing, health care, transportation, clothing, recreation,
home repair and maintenance, and trips and vacations.
The PSID also collects some retrospective variables, mostly from the
head of household but some from the wife as well. Some of these are the
economic standing of the family while growing up, the educational level
of the head of household’s father and mother, the occupation of the head
of household’s parents, and, in later versions of the PSID, the health
status of the head and wife for ages 0 to 16. New to the PSID in 2007 are
retrospective questions on illegal drug use as a child and adolescent.
There are a large number of supplements to the PSID, including the
Geocode identifier supplement to the PSID. In these files, PSID respon-
dents are identified by their state and county, down to their census tract
and census block number. Census and other information can then be
merged with the PSID for examination of area and neighborhood char-
acteristics. Restrictive contracts must signed by the researcher and the
researcher’s institution and be approved by the Survey Research Center
to receive these data. Other supplements include family history files,
which include relatively easy ways to get information on marriage, child-
birth, and adoptions for the family/individual.
Most of the PSID information is available from the PSID web page.
This data center page makes it relatively easy to find and download vari-
ables. The data center organizes the data by family and individual data
and then by variable type, such as health, income, education, and wealth
variables. Once you click on the variable type, you are given the years in
which the variables are available, and you can click on those years for
the variable you would like. You can save these variables for checkout
and then go to the individual variables desired. Once you choose the
 Secondary Datasets 103

individual variables, the data center will automatically create identifier

variables, such as family ID for the years you have chosen, as well as the
1968 family ID and person number. You can download these variables in
an SAS export, in Excel, or as ASCII data, with SAS, SPSS, or Stata pro-
grams to read the data. If you forget some data on your first try, you can
merge data by using the 1968 ID and person number for this merge. The
data center also makes whole year datasets available. Thus, if you are only
interest in the 2005 PSID and would like all of the variables for this year,
you can download the entire family dataset and the entire individual file
without having to choose variables. If you then want to merge these two
files, you will need to use the 2005 family ID, along with the 2005 family
ID on the individual file, to merge these data.
The Survey Research Center recently made a file available that allows
you to determine whether people in the PSID are siblings or have some
other relationship (https://simba.isr.umich.edu/FIMS/). This linking of
people with their relatives makes the examination of intergenerational
outcomes much easier than having to do all of this programming your-
self. The PSID is thus one of the few datasets you can use to examine
factors relating to how grandparents may affect grandchildren without
using only retrospective data. This data file, known as the family identi-
fication and mapping system (FIMS), can be downloaded in SAS, Excel,
or in ASCII with SAS, SPSS, or Stata statements. You can thus look at
either intergenerational mapping (which they call GID) or intragenera-
tional mapping (SID) for siblings. They provide a SAS macro program
for doing this determination of the siblings or other intergenerational
relationships within the data and merging it with other PSID data. The
program determines whether the siblings are full, half, or other types of
siblings. Determining sibling relationships can be useful for using sibling
fixed effects models, when examining how childhood circumstances may
affect adult outcomes. By using the sibling fixed effects method for your
analysis, unobserved but permanent features of the family can be con-
trolled even when these variables are not present in the data.
You can use fixed effects models in any of the mainstream statistical
programs (SAS, SPSS, or Stata) but the ease of use in Stata is especially
appealing, and that is the program that I use for such models. To use
sibling fixed effects models in Stata, you will need a sibling identifier for
each set of siblings. Once you have this, and have only those families that
have more than a single sibling in the data, you can run the Stata code for
104 Secondary Data Analysis

determining fixed effects. In the example below, I use fixed effects

to determine hours of work as an adult, using childhood variable as
predictors.
xtreg Hours AFDC FS marriedmom, fe i(id)

The “fe” indicates a fixed effects model (you can also run random
effect models or between effect models); “i” (newid) indicates the sibling
ID number that must be used to identify which of the observations are
siblings. This method determines a sibling family mean for each set of
siblings and subtracts this sibling family mean from the individual mean.
Thus, if there is only a single individual in the family, all of their mean
values go to zero, and you do not want to include a child with no siblings
in these models.
PSID data are used by many researchers on a wide variety of studies.
Research dealing with welfare and government assistance include studies
on the relationship teenage out-of-wedlock births and welfare receipt
(An, Haveman, & Wolfe, 1993), single-parent families and the effect of
welfare benefit levels (Butler, 1996), the long-term effects of poverty and
welfare receipt on young single mothers (Vartanian & McNamara, 2004),
and worker’s compensation, looking particularly at data on individuals
(Leigh, 1985). Also frequently studied using PSID data are health topics,
such as the time and quantity of sleep (Adam, Snell, & Pendry, 2007), the
contribution of neighborhood environment to overweight children
(Grafova, 2008), and the correlation between food insecurity and weight
gain in women (Jones & Frongillo, 2007). Studies involving education
topics include higher education and mate selection (Arum, Roksa, &
Budig, 2008), correlations between neighboring children and their edu-
cational attainment (Solon, Page, & Duncan, 2000), long-term effects
of Head Start (Garces, Thomas, & Currie, 2002), and the effect of neigh-
borhood conditions on high school drop-out and graduation rates
(Vartanian & Gleason, 1999). Studies on employment and income
include occupational injuries and diseases and compensating wages
(Leigh, 1981), income tax policy and charitable giving (Brooks, 2007),
young women heading households and the relationships among race,
industry restructuring, and employment (Browne, 2000), the correla-
tions among race and sex and on-the-job earnings differences (Duncan
& Hoffman, 1979), union membership and wages (Cunningham &
Donovan, 1986), and child and adolescent neighborhood effects on adult
 Secondary Datasets 105

income (Vartanian & Buck, 2005). Other studies include the relation-
ships among race and sex and intergenerational poverty (Corcoran &
Adams, 1997), delayed fatherhood (Weinshenker, 2006), the influence
of household poverty spells on mortality risk (Oh, 2001), philanthropy
in the United States after September 11 (Steinburg & Rooney, 2005),
poverty among the recently widowed (Smith & Zick, 1986), and the
intergenerational differences between whites and African Americans in
neighborhood mobility (Vartanian, Buck, & Gleason, 2007).
Additional publication lists are available at http://psidonline.isr.
umich.edu/Publications/Bibliography/default.aspx.
Data and codebooks for the PSID can be obtained at http://simba.isr.
umich.edu/Zips/ZipMain.aspx. An index of the variables, both person
and family level, can be viewed at http://simba.isr.umich.edu/VS/i.aspx.

PANEL STUDY OF INCOME DYNAMICS, CHILD DEVELOPMENT SUPPLEMENT

The Child Development Supplement CDS) is a supplement to the Panel
Study on Income Dynamics (PSID) that consists of a sample of children
from families in the PSID. This supplement was created to gather specific
information on the children within the PSID families and to create the
ability to examine the relationships between economic and social factors
and child development. The CDS collects data on the health, education,
employment, relationships, time use, social and psychological well-
being, and development of children and young adults, as well as infor-
mation about the home, school, and neighborhood contexts in which
they live. The CDS followed the children from 1997 to 2008, collecting
data in three waves (1997, 2002–2003, and 2007–2008). The Transition
to Adulthood Supplement 2005 and 2007 gathered information on CDS
youths who were 18 years or older at that time in order to understand
their experiences as they moved from their parents’ homes to indepen-
dence. With sampling weights, the CDS is nationally representative.
The CDS-I sample is the original CDS sample about which data were
collected in 1997. To create this sample, families with children under the
age of 13 years were identified, and then researchers randomly sampled
up to two children from these families. The final sample consists of
3,563 children from 2,394 families. The CDS-II, or second wave of data
collection in 2002, collected data on these same children when they were
106 Secondary Data Analysis

5 through 18 years old, half of whom were in adolescence. This sample

includes 2,907 children from 2,019 families. The CDS-III was collected
in 2007 and includes approximately the 1,677 children who were 10 to
18 years old at that time. Interviews were conducted with primary care-
givers (PCG), the children (ages 3 and above), other caregivers, absent
fathers, and preschool/daycare/elementary/middle school teachers and
administrators,
The CDS-I, CDS-II, and CDS-III contain similar data using similar
procedures, with modifications based on the development stage of the
child at each data collection point. Data collection included interviews
with the child, primary caregiver, other caregivers, and school teachers as
well as educational achievement assessments, course and grade reports,
and data from external school databases (CDS-II gathered data from
Common Core of Data). CDS-I focused on developmental issues from
infancy through middle childhood, while CDS-II focused more on issues
of adolescence and psychological and school data. The Transition to
Adulthood 2005 and 2007 (TA) collects data on CDS sample youths who
were 18 years old or older in 2005 and 2007, respectively, and informa-
tion related to their transition into adulthood. Data collection occurred
in 2005 and 2007, with 745 young adults participating in interviews (87%
of those eligible to participate) in 2005 and 1,115 young adults partici-
pating in 2007 (85% of those eligible to participate). Fewer than half of
adults become heads of household or wives in the PSID from ages 18 to
24, and thus less information is collected for them relative to those who
are heads of household or wives. This transition to adulthood data thus
gives more detailed information on the period of time when the person
is no longer a child but has not started his/her own household. The TA
interviews the young adults on a variety of issues specific to this period of
transition, such as their own employment, income and wealth, educa-
tional achievements, current relationships and children, and experiences
with discrimination.
The CDS contains a variety of information pertaining to the well-
being, education, health, economics and employment, time use and
family, and home and neighborhood environments of children and
young adults. Well-being and behavioral variables include anti- and pro-
social behaviors, social competence, and self-esteem, as well as experi-
ences with bullying, victimization, and incarceration. Additional variables
include sexual activity, such as experiences with sexual intercourse,
 Secondary Datasets 107

pregnancy and the use of condoms; experiences with discrimination; and

expectations for the future. Education variables include school status and
achievement (elementary, secondary, post-secondary, including grades
and reading and math assessments using the Woodcock-Johnson Revised
Tests of Achievement), educational expectations and aspirations of
both parents and children, school district characteristics, type and cost of
school, attendance, participation in special education or gifted programs,
enrollment in federal lunch and breakfast programs, and courses taken
in school. Health variables include chronic conditions, eating and exer-
cising behaviors, obesity, smoking, alcohol and drug use, and health care
utilization. Time use variables include the types and frequencies of
various activities in which respondents participate (and with whom) and
electronic media use. Family data include information such as parental
monitoring, attitudes toward parenting, relationships between absent
parents and their children, social support, child care characteristics,
family conflict and closeness, cognitive and emotional stimulation, and
sibling interactions. Other relationship variables include dating behav-
iors, peer relationships, and familial expectations. Numerous scales are
available for self-esteem, self-efficacy, psychological distress, and many
other variables. Variables for perceived neighborhood conditions include
residential stability, social cohesion, and neighborhood safety. Time dia-
ries are kept for some of the CDS respondents, with overall time diaries,
as well as school-based diaries. To see all of the variables in the CDS and
TA files, see http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/CDS/wavesdoc.html.
The CDS data can be linked to PSID data, making it possible to
examine the relationship between child-related outcomes and family
demographic and economic data (including intergenerational data).
Information about years prior to 1997, when the CDS started, can be
determined for those in the CDS sample. Thus, researchers may be inter-
ested in circumstances of the family throughout the life of the children or
in the years before the birth of the child. Through the 1968 family ID and
the person number, such information can be determined for CDS/PSID
respondents. Thus, the average income over the life of the child can be
determined even though it is not given in the CDS data. The CDS and the
PSID can be linked by using the 1968 family ID (er30001) and the person
number (er30002) for the individual.
Like the PSID, the CDS can be linked to Census tract and other
census information in order to ascertain neighborhood conditions.
108 Secondary Data Analysis

Special contracts must be obtained in order to get this link to census

information. Note that the Survey Research Center does not provide the
Census information, but it does provide the census identifiers (such as
census tract, county and city, and other census identifiers).
Researchers have used CDS data to explore the predictors of media
use (Bickman et al., 2003) and the relationships between television
watching and social isolation (Bickham & Rich, 2006), anti-social behav-
ior (Christakis & Zimmerman, 2007), and obesity (Vandewater, Shim, &
Caplovitz, 2004). Other have studied the relationships between time use
and weight (Curtin & Hofferth, 2003), and physical activity and out-
comes such as depression (Desha, Ziviani, Nicholson, & Martin, 2007).
Researchers also have studied the relationships between parental charac-
teristics and child outcomes such as parental education and income on
child achievement (Davis-Kean, 2005), ideologies on after-school activi-
ties (Dunn, Kinney & Hofferth, 2003), the timing of childbearing and
child achievement and behavior (Hofferth & Reid, 2002), family income
and behavior (Hofferth et al., 2000), mental health on behavior and
well-being (Kahn, Brandt, & Whitaker, 2004), and fathers’ school
involvement and student achievement (McBride, Schoppe-Sullivan &
Ho, 2005).
Other researchers have explored the relationships between economic
factors and child health and development (Condliffe & Link, 2008;
Shanks & Williams, 2007), and program participation and outcomes
such as school lunch programs and child well-being (Dunifon &
Kowaleski-Jones, 2003), food stamps and obesity (Gibson, 2004; Hofferth
& Curtin, 2005), and mother’s work and welfare use and child well-being
(Neblett, 2007)
Researchers have also studied the relationships between neighbor-
hood characteristics and a variety of child outcomes (Jackson & Mare,
2007; López Turley, 2002), including obesity (Grafova, 2008) and school
achievement (Kowaleski-Jones, Dunifon, & Ream, 2006).
There are several ways to select variables for the CDS. One of the
easier ways is to use the index system to select variables. To do this, go to
http://simba.isr.umich.edu/VS/f.aspx, then click on the “+” sign for CDS
and TA (including time diary aggregates). You will see all of the different
files to choose from, including the demographic file, the primary care-
giver child file, the child file, and other files. You can click on any of the
 Secondary Datasets 109

+ signs, choose the variables of interest, and put them into your data cart.
For example, you may wish to put the variables child’s race from the
demographic file and emotional and physical condition of the child
from the child file. Do this by clicking on these variables and clicking
on “Add to Cart.” You can then click on “Variables Added” to your cart.
It will look like this:

Note that the file automatically creates the 1968 interview number
and the person number, which are the unique identifiers for the person.
You can then download this page and use it, or create more variables,
both from the PSID and from the CDS. You can then check out and
download the data, with a codebook for the variables you have chosen, in
ASCII format with SAS, SPSS, Stata statements, as an SAS transport file,
or in dBase or Excel. You can then send the files to your e-mail address
or create the files and download them on the web page. You must create
a login account to get any of the data.
CDS-I, CDS-II, CDS-III, and TA data are available through the
PSID Data Center at http://simba.isr.umich.edu.
110 Secondary Data Analysis

PROJECT ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN CHICAGO

NEIGHBORHOODS (PHDCN)
The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
(PHDCN) is a large, interdisciplinary study that collected cross-sectional
neighborhood data and longitudinal cross-sectional individual data over
a period of seven years. This dataset makes it possible to look at how
environmental factors such as neighborhood, family, and school features
shape an individual’s behavior and personal development, especially as it
relates to antisocial behaviors such as juvenile delinquency, adult crime,
violence, and substance abuse. The data consists of two studies within
one design, resulting in both neighborhood and individual level data.
These two data types exist independently from each other, allowing
researchers to study the way in which neighborhood type and conditions
predict future behavior by coupling the neighborhood information with
the individual and behavioral data. This study is representative only of
Chicago and the ages used to define the cohorts in the Longitudinal
Cohort Study (birth/0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18).
Researchers collected neighborhood level data from 343 neighbor-
hood clusters, with 8,000 individuals each, created by combining Chicago’s
825 census tracks into ecologically meaningful, demographically similar
(stratified by seven racial/ethnic groups and three socioeconomic groups)
and geographically contiguous groups. Neighborhood data gathered
include information about the social, economic, organizational, struc-
tural, political, and cultural life of the community. The neighborhood
aspect of the study consisted of a Community Survey and Systematic
Social Observations (SSO).
The Community Survey includes household interviews with 8,782
randomly selected household members over 18 years of age from the
neighborhood clusters. Data were collected only in 1994–1995 and 2001–
2002. The survey asked participants a variety of questions about their
perspectives on and experiences in their neighborhoods, including the
neighborhood social organization, services and activities, neighbor
relationships, social cohesion, crime and violence, political structure,
cultural values, and informal and formal social control. The survey also
inquires about participants’ normative values on a variety of issues and
behaviors and their experiences as victims of crime and with violence.
The Community Survey collects data about residents’ perceptions on the
 Secondary Datasets 111

best and worst parts of living in Chicago; their definition of neighbor-

hood; their length of residence in neighborhood; whether they would
consider moving; neighborhood characteristics; perceived neighbor-
hood danger; availability of social service agencies; and neighbor rela-
tionships, recognition, and socialization and how often neighbors
participated in activities together. Social order and disorder measures
include perceptions about neighborhood conditions, such as fear of
crime, drugs, gangs, sexual assault, robbery, theft, and excessive force by
law enforcement agencies. The PHDCN has one of the most extensive
measures on neighborhood characteristics. Thus, if your research is
neighborhood related and you are interested in childhood outcomes, this
is an excellent dataset for such studies. The data does not contain adult
variables for the children in the study.
The Systematic Social Observations (SSO) consisted of both person
and videotaped standardized observations of 80 Chicago neighborhoods
(27,734 blocks), selected through stratified random sampling, in which
researchers recorded data about physical, social, and economic neigh-
borhood characteristics relating to security, physical and social disorder,
and decay and land use. Data was collected in 1995 and in approximately
2000–2002. Observation occurred as two observers and one videogra-
pher were slowly driven through each of the 80 selected neighborhoods.
The systematic social observations recorded information about neigh-
borhood characteristics, such as the visible presence of children and
teens, graffiti, drug dealing, gang indicators, adult loitering and drunk-
enness, fights, and prostitution. In addition, observations noted land use,
the condition of buildings, residential housing, commercial buildings,
street conditions, and recreational facilities.
The individual level data includes a Longitudinal Cohort Study and
an Infant Assessment Unit. The Longitudinal Cohort Study followed
6,226 children, adolescents, young adults, and their primary caregivers
over a period of eight years. Participants came from seven age cohorts
(birth (0), 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 years of age) and were randomly selected
from the 80 neighborhood clusters. Researchers collected data in three
waves: 1994–1997, 1997–1999, and 2000–2002. The overall response rate
for Wave 1 was 75%; for Wave 2, the overall response rate was 86%; and
for Wave 3, the overall response rate was 78%.
Individual variables include assessments of mental health, antisocial
behavior, internalizing problems, emotional and attention behaviors,
112 Secondary Data Analysis

suicidal ideation and attempts, and classifications with mental health

problems, substance abuse, self-efficacy, view of the future, health service
utilization, and social networks and support. Other individual level vari-
ables include indicators of verbal, cognitive, and motor skills; sexual
activity and attitudes toward sex; personality and attitude information
including temperament; educational expectations; and discrimination.
Environmental variables include data about climate and safety of the
school environment, the quality of education, funding of the day care,
characteristics of the day care and provider, and the physical home
environment.
Family variables provide family health history, including mental
health and specific medical problems such as depression, substance
abuse, suicide (relationship to child, method and care received), therapy
treatment, and exposure to violence. Parental warmth/involvement is
measured, as is social support; community involvement; structure;
involvement of the mother and father; supervision; conflict; encourage-
ment for intellectual, social, and physical growth; and religiosity.
The Infant Assessment Unit studied 412 infants from the birth cohort
in Wave 1 (1994–1997) and their primary caregivers to investigate how
pre- and postnatal conditions affect the infant’s health and development
during the infant’s first year of life. The assessment is also designed to
connect this early development to the existence of later antisocial actions
behaviors. Survey and observational data of both infant and primary
caregiver were collected when infants were between 5 and 7 months of
age. This assessment was conducted in addition to the protocol adminis-
tered in the longitudinal cohort study. The assessment measured infants’
temperament, physical growth and development, cognition, and preg-
nancy conditions. The assessment also studied the primary caregivers,
measuring the developmental and physical environment in which the
child is raised; child care situation; social support and relationship with
the father; caregivers’ psychological, emotional, and behavioral health
and quality of life; and the prenatal and delivery conditions of the infant’s
biological mother.
Because of the neighborhood clustering and the ability to examine
more than a single child within a family, many people have used hierar-
chical linear modeling (HLM) with the PHDCN. This allows, for exam-
ple, for the nesting of individuals within families, within neighborhoods.
 Secondary Datasets 113

This allows for fixed and random effects at each level of the nesting
(Buka, Brennan, Rich-Edwards, Raudenbush, & Earls, 2003; Kuo,
Mohler, Raudenbush, & Earls Raudenbush, & Bryk, 2001; Raudenbush
& Bryk, 2001).
Both community and individual level data have been used to study a
variety of outcomes. In addition to investigating the relationship between
the neighborhood environment and general health outcomes (Browning
& Cagney, 2002, 2003; Cohen, Farley, & Mason, 2003; Wen, Browning, &
Cagney,2003), other health-related outcomes include differences across
sociocultural settings (Drukker, Buka, Kaplan, McKenzie, & Van Os,
2005), respiratory disease (Cagney & Browning, 2004), physical activity
(Molnar, Gortmaker, & Buka, 2004), birth weight (Buka, Brennan, Rich-
Edwards, Raudenbush, & Earls, 2003; Morenoff, 2003), mortality
(Browning, Wallace, Feinberg, & Cagney, 2006; Lochner, Kawachi,
Brennan, & Buka, 2003; Wen, Cagney, & Christakis, 2005), health among
older adults (Cagney, Browning, & Wen, 2005; Wen, Hawkley, &
Cacioppo, 2006) and sexual activity and attitudes (Browning &
Burrington, 2006; Browning, Leventhal, & Brooks-Gunn, 2004; Browning
& Olinger-Wilbon, 2003). Published studies also test the relationships
between social bonds and elderly migration (Oh, 2003) and homeowner-
ship among the poor (Brisson & Usher, 2007).
Additional, researchers have examined the relationships between the
environment and child maltreatment (Molnar, Buka, Brennan, Holton,
& Earls, 2003), substance use (Novak, Reardon, & Buka, 2002; Reardon,
Brennan, & Buka, 2002), including differences in substance use across
races (Reardon & Buka, 2002), and crime and violence (Browning,
Feinberg, & Dietz, 2004; Kirk, 2008; Kirk, 2006; Morenoff, Sampson, &
Raudenbush, 2001; Obeidallah, Brennan, Brooks-Gunn, & Earls, 2004;
Sampson, Morenoff, & Raudenbush, 2005), as well as the relationship
between exposure to violence and violent or other antisocial behavior
(Bingenheimer, Brennan, & Earls, 2005; Molnar, Browne, Cerda, &
Buka, 2005; Molnar, Miller, Azrael, & Buka, 2004).
The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data that is included in the
PHDCN is restricted to users who are willing and able to sign contracts
indicating that they will use the data only for statistical analyses and not
for identifying users. This generally means that you must use the data at
a stand-alone computer (with no network connections) with password
114 Secondary Data Analysis

protection and often, encrypted data. See the website http://www.icpsr.

umich.edu/NACJD/private/ for a full explanation of how to gain access
to these restricted files.
A list of all of the instruments and scales used in the data are located
at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/PHDCN/instruments.html. Codebooks
for the data are available at http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/mra/faces/
study/StudyPage.xhtml?studyId=431&tab=files&studyListingIndex=
0_73cb0790aba235a8a5812876af39.
Data are available at the ICPSR website, www.icpsr.umich.edu/
PHDCN. Data currently are available only for the first wave of the
Community Survey and Systematic Social Observation. Longitudinal
Cohort Study Data for all three waves are available. The dataset is set up
in many different files which will need to be merged, depending on the
needs of your research. For example, at the ICPSR the Wave 3 data are
available for primary caregivers, young adults, youth self-reports, school
screening, and substance use follow-up. All of these files, plus many,
many more are available in the first waves of the study as well (for 172
publicly available files). To merge these files by neighborhood character-
istics, you will need the neighborhood link variable, linc_nc, or the link
for the neighborhood cluster. To link the different cohort files together,
you will need the respondent link, or rc_num.

PUBLIC-USE MICRODATA SAMPLES

The Public-Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) consists of sample data
from the U.S. decennial census, sampled from the “long form” or the
American Community Survey, which is replacing the long form in the
2010 census. These data are collected to provide information about
the social, economic, and financial characteristics of the population to
assist in the determination of federal spending and service provision.
PUMS includes both individual and household level data pertaining to
demographics and economic, social, housing, and financial characteris-
tics of the population. Household level data include data pertaining to
individual housing units and group housing units, such as nursing
homes, military barracks, school dormitories, and correctional facilities.
The long form and its replacement, the American Community Survey
(ACS), collect similar data pertaining to the demographic, economic,
 Secondary Datasets 115

social, housing, and financial characteristics of the population. The long

form data, however, was collected decennially for a point-in-time
estimate, whereas the ACS is a nationwide, annual, continuous survey
providing yearlong averages. PUMS is a subsample of the ACS dataset
that allows researchers to select individual and household level variables
of interest and create their own tables and statistics on those variables,
a feature the ACS summary data does not allow.
PUMS includes all variables collected by the ACS, with some modifi-
cations to protect identities, but for a limited group of observations
based on geographic population size. Data for PUMS is sampled using a
stratified sampling procedure that sampled data address-by-address and,
for group quarters, person-by-person. Two independent samples
are drawn: 5% of which includes approximately 14 million people and
5 million housing units (2000), and 1% of which includes approximately
2.8 million people and 1 million housing units (2000). The records
in each sample are different. PUMS data are provided for census-
created geographic regions called Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs),
derived from the 1% or 5% data files. Each PUMA has a minimum
census population of 100,000 and consists of entire communities or
combinations of contiguous counties or census tracts that have similar
characteristics but do not cross state lines. Each PUMA is derived from
the 5% sample file. Super-PUMAs, with a minimum of 400,000 census
population, are aggregates of PUMAs and are derived from the 1%
sample data.
The ACS PUMS files, starting in 2006, are released in one-, three- and
five-year estimates. One-year estimates are only for those areas with a
population of 65,000 or more and contain data on 1% of the population.
Three-year estimates are for those with a population of 20,000 or more
and contain data on approximately 3% of the population. Five-year esti-
mates include all areas. With each estimate, the sample size grows while
the minimum population threshold decreases. One-year estimates have
been released since 2006, three-year estimates since 2008, and the first
five-year estimates were released in 2010. In 2000, the ACS conducted
over half a million interviews, while in years 2005 to 2008, close to two
million interviews were conducted.
Because of these geographic limitations, data cannot be summarized
for individual cities, counties, or other small areas. Because PUMS is
a subsample of the census data, the estimates differ from population
116 Secondary Data Analysis

estimate provided by the Census Bureau. Weights are subsequently pro-

vided to correct this.
The PUMS dataset includes individual and household level informa-
tion. Individual level data include information such as demographics,
English proficiency and language spoken at home, citizenship, disability
status, education attainment and enrollment, military and work status,
occupation and industry, income and poverty status, work-related
modes of transportation and commuting time, fertility, and personal
care and work limitations. Household level information includes vari-
ables relating to housing, such as mortgage, property value, and taxes;
linguistic isolation; rooms, utilities and facilities (e.g., kitchen and
plumbing) within the living unit; costs (e.g., mortgage, rent, utilities);
children and subfamilies within the unit; length of time in unit; house-
hold income and Food Stamps; and vehicles associated with the unit.
For a fuller list of variables, see http://www.census.gov/acs/www/
Products/PUMS/PUMS3.htm or http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/
doc/pums.pdf.
PUMS data allow researchers to explore the relationships among
demographic, social, economic, financial, and housing variables.
Researchers have studied health issues such as the prevalence of dis-
abilities among particular ethnic groups (Dallo et al., 2009; Goins et al.,
2007), education issues such as mortality and its relationship to educa-
tional attainment (Hadden & Rockswold, 2008) and the relationship
between education and household location (Sander & Testa, 2009).
Researchers have used PUMS to examine family relationships, such as
changing fertility among ethnic groups (Ren, 2009), marriage migration
(Hidalgo & Bankston, 2008), and interracial marriage and socioeco-
nomic well-being (Fu, 2008). Researchers have also studied economic
issues, such as the market labor costs and earnings as they relate to par-
ticular ethnic groups (Takei, Saenz, & Li, 2009; Wang, 2008), spousal
mobility and earnings (McKinnish, 2008), and the impact of residential
segregation on self-employment (Fairchild, 2008).
PUMS data, and additional resources for using the data and the ACS,
are available through the U.S. Census through both the Census 2000
page (www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html) and the PUMS page
(www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/PUMS). Use the Data Ferret from
the Census Bureau to access a number of these files, including ACS for
2004 –2007, and some three-year averages. Files from 1996–2007 are
 Secondary Datasets 117

available on the PUMS web page (http://www.census.gov/acs/www/

Products/PUMS/acspums_archived.html). To get the files in the Data
Ferret, the program must be downloaded(http://dataferrett.census.gov/
TheDataWeb/launchDFA.html). Once you have downloaded the Data
Ferret, you can begin to choose datasets and variables you would like to
examine. The Data Ferret looks like this:

Once you choose a dataset to work with, you click on the + sign to
open up which of the datasets to work with, then click on variables you
would like to put into your data basket. Here, when you choose the
Decennial Public Use Microdata, only the 1990 data are available. If you
choose the American Community Survey, years 2004–2007 are available.
Let’s choose the 2007 Public Use Microsample, as show above. Click on
whichever variables you would like to use, using the control button to
click on a number of variables to be selected at the same time. Next, click
on “Browse/Select Highlighted Variables.” You will be taken to a code-
book for all of the variables you have selected. You can then choose the
variables to go into your data basket by clicking on the box for “Select All
Variables,” and then clicking on “OK.”
118 Secondary Data Analysis

Once you are done selecting variables, you will go to Step 2 at the top
of the page. Here, you can either make a table and save it in a number of
formats, or you can download the data in a great number of formats,
including SAS, SPSS, Stata, or Excel. This is shown in the figure in the
following page.
The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) is where the
PUMS data are stored, preserved, documented, and “harmonized.”
There is also an international IPUMS. These files can be found at http://
usa.ipums.org/usa/. Samples for the IPUMS go back to 1850 and up to
the current ACS sample.

SCHOOL DATA DIRECT

School Data Direct (SDD) is an online source for state educational data
and analytical tools (http://www.schooldatadirect.org). The SDD is part
 Secondary Datasets 119

of the State Education Data Center, which is in turn a part of the Council
of Chief State School Officers’ National Education Data Partnership.
In addition to the website with publicly available data, SDD serves as a
leading advocate for quality educational data collection, standard, and use.
The SDD provides information about public schools and public
school districts. It includes the full universe of public primary and sec-
ondary schools. The SDD provides information about student profi-
ciency on statewide reading and math tests, financial data (including
spending per student, staff compensation, and long-term debt), whether
the school is making adequate yearly progress toward No Child Left
Behind targets, teacher qualifications and certifications, class size, school
safety (e.g., presence of physical assaults, firearms and nonfirearm weap-
ons, violence against staff, and disciplinary sanctions), student perfor-
mance, and student and community demographic data, such as ethnicity,
gender, disabilities, income levels, property values, educational level, and
population information. Math proficiency data are available from third
to 11th grades, as are college entrance exams; for lower elementary
grades, participation in math and reading is measured. SDD provides
data on the community in which the school or district exists. These vari-
ables include adult education level, household characteristics such as
120 Secondary Data Analysis

income and single-parent-headed households, population distribution

by age, and labor statistics. Data are currently available from 2002–2007.
In the early years of the sample, many schools had missing data for many
of the variables.
Researchers can search and download data by state, district, or
school. Data are available in Excel tables, researcher-created tables
(including a maximum of 100 schools or districts), or through the data
directory using the data download tool. The website provides guides for
the download and interpretation of data, data definitions, abbreviations
and sources, and other relevant information. Given that states may col-
lect data differently, researchers should view state-specific information
before accessing and using the data. Additionally, urban status data
reflect metro-centric data rather than urban-centric data, and state pay-
ments on behalf of the district have been excluded from district level
financial data.
Data are collected through a variety of sources, coordinated by
EDFacts, a project of the U.S. Department of Education. Student profi-
ciency data come from state departments of education, the National
Center for Education Statistics, and test vendors. The financial data come
from the National Center for Education Statistics National Public
Education Finance Survey, state departments of education, and U.S.
Census Form F-33. The community demographic data come from the
2000 Census of Population and Housing. The Coordinated Data, an
effort by the Data Quality Campaign and the Department of Education,
offers a unified data collection template for researchers.
To download data for an aggregate of the schools in a state, you
would first need to sign agreements on the web page, and then go to
http://download.schooldatadirect.org/DataDownloadFileLister.html.
Next, click on your state of interest—here, Pennsylvania is chosen—then
State, to obtain information at the state level. Please see the figure given
in the following page.
From here, you can choose which year you would like to open, from
2002 to 2008. You can see that the 2008 file is small and contains little
information. I click on the 2007 file and open the dataset after it has been
decompressed. Next, open the file in Excel, with Delimited formatting,
other delimiters (use the | symbol as the other delimiter) and text col-
umns. (See http://download.schooldatadirect.org/_ddtv/DataDownload
GuideFiles/SDD_How_to_Download_Data.pdf for a step-by-step method
 Secondary Datasets 121

of getting the data into Excel.) The Excel page will look like the figure
shown at the top of the following page, with information on reading and
math proficiency and information on average yearly progress for the No
Child Left Behind law for each school district.
You can also use pivot tables in Excel to view the variables across the
top of the screen, but these are limited to tables with 256 rows or fewer.
The data will look something like the figure shown at the bottom of the
following page once you are able to pivot the data (http://download.
schooldatadirect.org/_ddtv/DataDownloadGuideFiles/SDD_How_to_
Download_Data.pdf).
122 Secondary Data Analysis

Once you have pivoted the table, you can continue to work in Excel, or
export the data into SAS, SPSS, or Stata to more easily program the data.
School Data Direct can be used with the PSID Child Development
Supplement through a special contract with the Survey Research Center
at the University of Michigan. It can also be merged onto many other
data files that have identifiers at the school, school district, or state level.
 Secondary Datasets 123

SURVEY OF INCOME AND PROGRAM PARTICIPATION (SIPP)

The Survey of Income and Program Participation is a longitudinal study
that contains person and household information about income and pro-
gram participation for people aged 15 to 64 years old living in the United
States. The datasets include such information as program participation,
employment, government and other income sources and amounts, and
details about employers, unemployment and job searches, health insur-
ance, child care, education, and other factors relating to economic and
social well-being. SIPP also contains information about children under
15 years old through proxy interviews with other adults in the house-
hold. Panels began in 1984 (when this first sample started), with the most
recent panels in 2001, 2004, and a new 2008 panel (with only a few waves
available at the time of this writing), and members are interviewed every
four months (each of these periods is a wave of data), and generally, with
information regarding each of the previous four months. Sample mem-
bers in a given SIPP panel are typically followed for two to three years
(eight to 12 waves), although some panels were shorter than this (such as
the 1988 and 1989 panels).
SIPP is nationally representative of U.S.-based, noninstitutionalized
individuals aged 15 –to 64 years. Starting in 1990, low-income house-
holds were oversampled. Sampling weights are available to make the
sample nationally representative. The dataset is not representative at the
state level.
The SIPP uses a two-stage sampling design: (a) select primary sam-
pling units (PSUs), and (b) select address units within those sample
PSUs, which have been clustered based on Census Bureau sampling
frames. Researchers then visit each address to verify that it exists and has
occupants and to record the number of units at each address. Following
SIPP membership rules, they identify and create a roster of the house-
hold members, aged 15 through 64 years, who live in each of the units.
Researchers determine the reference person (owner or renter), and then
identify the others by their relationships to that person. All these indi-
viduals are the original sample members and those whom researchers
follow over the course of the panel, even as they move to new locations.
Should a panel member live with other people, in the original household
or because they moved to another household, those new individuals also
124 Secondary Data Analysis

become panel members for as long as they live with the original member.
Interviews stop if a panel member moves to military barracks, is institu-
tionalized, or moves outside the United States. Interviews also stop if a
household no longer has an original member living within it.
Sample size varies across SIPP panels. The 1984 panel’s sample
included 19,878 households, while the 2004 sample included 43,711
households. In Wave 1, researchers conducted interviews with all origi-
nal sample members within the household who were 15 through 64 years
old. Proxy interviews gather data on those who are not present in future
waves, children under 15 years of age, and those within the household
who are unable to respond for themselves.
Researchers gather two types of data, core content and topical con-
tent. Core content was gathered in each wave, and each question has the
same four-month reference period. Labor force participation is recorded
on both a weekly and a monthly time frame. Given the different refer-
ence periods for the core and topical contents (described below), the
dataset uses a person-month structure in which all data are coded at the
monthly level. Data are aggregated or disaggregated based on the refer-
ence period to that monthly level. Each set of wave data includes one
record for each person for each month in the wave.
Following a 1996 redesign, core content included three categories:
(a) employment and earnings such as employment status (week by
week), employer characteristics, self-employment, earnings (including
from unemployment), and time spent job seeking; (b) program, general,
and asset income such as Social Security, Food Stamps, disability, work-
ers compensation, child support and alimony, and other assets such as
bonds, stocks, and retirement accounts; and (c) other information such
as health insurance ownership and coverage, education, energy assis-
tance, and school lunch program participation.
Different topical modules are generally included with the core ques-
tions at each four-month interview. Each topical content question has a
different reference period, ranging from the time at the interview to
one’s whole life. The topical content questions revolve around a variety
of topical modules: adult well-being, annual earnings and benefits,
annual income and retirement accounts, assets, liabilities and eligibility,
child care, child support agreements, child support paid, children’s well-
being, employment history, extended well-being measures (household
 Secondary Datasets 125

and neighborhood), fertility history, functional limitation and disability,

housing costs, long-term care, marital history, migration history, reasons
for not working/reservation wage, recipient history (of government pro-
grams), retirement expectations and pension plan coverage, selected
financial assets, taxes, time spent outside work force, welfare history
and child support, public assistance eligibility and recipiency, and work-
related expenses.
SIPP provides health variables that provide information about adult
and child physical and mental disabilities and limitations that affect daily
living and work; special education services; need for personal assistance;
hospital, facility, and psychiatric institution stays; illnesses/injuries that
lead to bedrest; use of home health care and caregiver type; long-term
health conditions and care that impact daily living and who provides
such care; whether respondent provides home or long-term health care
to someone else; and types of professionals who delivered health care.
The SIPP data make it possible for researchers to look at income,
program participation, and other economic and social variables across
individuals, families, and households over time as well as across different
subgroups or demographics. The data can also be linked with policies in
order to examine how policy relates to a variety of individual, family,
or household outcomes. Because SIPP also provides information about
how family and household composition changes over time, researchers
can also examine factors that are influenced by or predict those changes.
Data can also be used cross-sectionally.
As an example of using the SIPP, variables from the 2004 panel are
shown below. The panel has 12 waves, with each wave covering four
months of information, so that the information provided in the dataset
is given on a monthly basis. Each of the first eight waves also has topical
modules that cover such areas as employment history and recipiency
history in Wave 1; marital history, migration history, and fertility history
in Wave 2; and child well-being, child care, and welfare reform variables
in Wave 8.
In Data Ferret, the screen for the topical modual for Wave 2 looks
like the figure given in the next page.
You can then choose your variables or search for variables. You can
next choose variables from any of the waves and any of the topical mod-
ules and put them into your data basket for downloading.
126 Secondary Data Analysis

Sample attrition in the SIPP has been around 35% by the end of
the sampling period, according to the Census Bureau (http://www.acf.
hhs.gov/programs/opre/other_resrch/eval_data/reports/common_
constructs/com_appb_sipp.html).
Researchers have used SIPP to study demographics such as the
number of deaf individuals in the United States (Mitchell, 2006). Others
have examined the relationship between family structure or living
arrangements on the well-being of children (Hynes & Dunifon, 2007;
Manning, 2006) and among immigrants (Van Hook & Glick, 2007).
Researchers also have studied the relationships between educational
returns among those who are disabled (Hollenbeck & Kimmel, 2008),
and marital dissolution and women’s education (Martin, 2006).
Researchers also have extensively studied the relationships between
income and economic factors and a variety of outcomes. One study looks
at pathways out of poverty (Pandey & Kim, 2008) and others look at the
relationship between maternal employment and child care (Lopoo, 2007;
Isaacs, 2006; Kimmel & Powell, 2006). Others look at income trends
(Copeland, 2007) and economic factors or conditions across different
 Secondary Datasets 127

demographics (Cobb-Clark & Hildebrand, 2006; Grinstein-Weiss, Yeo,

Zhan, & Charles, 2008; She & Livermore, 2007; Wu & Eamon, 2007).
Several studies focus specifically on income and the elderly (Rupp,
Strand, Davies, & Sears, 2007; Copeland, 2006; Elder & Powers, 2006).
SIPP makes it possible to study the linkages between policy and vari-
ous outcomes such as psychological well-being (Cheng, 2007), mothers’
well-being (Boushey, 2008), household outcomes (Duggan & Kearney,
2007), and home ownership (Herbert & Tsen, 2007). Other studies look
at the impact of welfare policy on different economic conditions such as
unemployment insurance eligibility (Boushey & Wenger, 2006), Food
Stamp accessibility (Hanratty, 2006), work disability and migration
(Graefe, De Jong, & May, 2006) and scar effects of unemployment
(Gangl, 2006).
Researchers also can study the characteristics of different income or
employment types, such as self-employment (Lofstrom & Wang, 2007),
the dynamics of participation in the Food Stamp Program (Gleason,
Schochet, & Moffitt 1998), spells on welfare and income after welfare
(Vartanian & Gleason, 1999) and the relationship between labor market
dynamics and employment (Mazumder, 2007).
Data are available through the Census Bureau website, www.census.
gov/sipp and also http://dataferrett.census.gov/TheDataWeb/launch
DFA.html. Codebooks for the SIPP can be found at http://www.census.
gov/apsd/techdoc/sipp/sipp.html.

SURVEY OF PROGRAM DYNAMICS

The Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD), a longitudinal and demographic
study, was created after Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, as an extension of the
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The Survey of
Program Dynamics studied the SIPP participants, originally interviewed
in 1992–1993, and continued to survey them until 2002. The survey
aimed to observe the impact of the act, the long-term effects of welfare
reforms on recipients and their families, and the interaction of welfare
reforms with each other and employment, income, and family circum-
stances. The SPD collected data on economic, household and social char-
acteristics in three waves: 1992–1993, 1997, and 1998–2002. The sample
is nationally representative.
128 Secondary Data Analysis

The SPD population consists of adults and children, including those

in group-living situations, such as dormitories or religious dwellings.
It does not include people in nursing homes, institutionalized people,
or entire military families. The study also excludes U.S. citizens living
abroad and foreigner visitors to the United States. The original SIPP
1992–1993 sample includes 35,291 households, and the 1997 wave
includes 30,125 households. The household sample sizes for the 1998–
2002 wave differs for each year: 16,395 (1998), 16,659 (1999), 18,716
(2000), 22,340 (2001), and 12,496 (2002) (http://www.census.gov/spd/
pubs/spdug_01.pdf).
Sample attrition rates for the SPD were initially high because of
a 26.6% sample attrition in the SIPP, where the sample was started.
In 1998, after two years of the SPD, sample attrition was up to 50%.
By 2000, the sample attrition rate had slowed, and recontacting those
who had dropped out has increased the response rate to 53% in 2002.
See http://www.census.gov/spd/design/sample.html for a full report on
response rates for the SPD.
The first wave, 1992–1993, collected core and topical data using the
SIPP instruments. The SIPP collected data from households once every
four months and followed respondents when they moved. Core data,
collected at every interview and generally measured on a monthly basis,
included such variables as demographics, labor force participation, pro-
gram participation, and private health insurance. Topical data, collected
less frequently, gathered more in-depth information, such as marital
history, school enrollment, disability, and work history.
The second wave, 1997, used a modified version of the March annual
income supplement to the Current Population Survey to collect demo-
graphic and income information.
The third wave, 1998–2002, used the SPD instrument to collect
economic, demographic, and social data once a year about the previous
year. A self-administered CAPI questionnaire collected more sensitive
data, such as marital conflict and parental depression. In 1998 and 2001,
respondents completed a self-administered paper questionnaire com-
pleted by adolescents on subjects such as the presence of violence among
family members, substance abuse, sexual activity, and vocational goals.
In 2000, the SPD included a Children’s Residential History Calendar to
monitor the frequency and timing of children’s moves. In 1999 and 2002,
additional questions were collected on children’s well-being, positive
 Secondary Datasets 129

behavior, and conflict between parents. The drug and alcohol sections of
the data include questions on irresponsible drinking, alcohol leading to
emotional/psychological problems, addiction tendencies, alcohol and
drug use affecting home life and work, frequency of times drank more
than intended, spending the majority of daily life drinking or getting
over the effects of drinking, and dealing with drinking more alcohol than
previously needed to achieve a desired effect. SPD also inquires about
specific drugs, including tranquilizers or nerve pills, amphetamines or
other stimulants, analgesics or other prescription painkillers, inhalants,
marijuana, cocaine, LSD and other hallucinogens, and heroin. Questions
are asked regarding treatment for drug and alcohol problems. SPD also
provides information on whether mental health problems limit work,
everyday activities, or schoolwork.
The SPD collected core data for adults on employment, income, pro-
gram participation, health insurance and utilization, child well-being,
marital relationships, parents’ depression, vehicle expenses, and food
security. The core data questions for children included topics such as
school enrollment, enrichment activities, disability, health care utiliza-
tion, and mother’s work schedule.
Researchers have used SPD to study welfare reform, earnings,
and income (Connolly & Marston, 2005) and the impact of welfare
reform on adolescent outcomes (Trzcinski & Brandell, 2002; Trzcinski,
Brandell, Ferro, & Smith, 2005), as well as to evaluate welfare reform
(Hisnanick, 2004). Other studies have looked at the impact of legislation
on parental leave (Han & Waldfogel, 2003); the relationship among
welfare reform, food assistance programs, and the labor supply (Huffman
& Jensen, 2005); food assistance programs and household food
security (Huffman & Jensen, 2003); the length of welfare spells for
female-headed households in rural areas (Porterfield, 1998); and the
correlation between poverty and food sufficiency (Ribar & Hamrick,
2003).
Data are publicly available through ICPSR for each wave of the data
collection and as a longitudinal file. The codebooks are available through
the ICPSR at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi-bin/bob/archive2?study=
3594&path=ICPSR&docsonly=yes and other information, including
information on merging SPD files, is available at http://www.census.gov/
spd/pubs/spdug_01.pdf. The data are accessible at http://www.icpsr.
umich.edu/cocoon/ICPSR/SERIES/00136.xml. The U.S. Census Bureau
130 Secondary Data Analysis

web page provides additional information about the SPD (http:://www.

sipp.census.gov/spd/ and http://www.census.gov/spd/survey.html). The
1999 to 2002 cross-sectional and the longitudinal file of the SPD data are
also available from the Data Ferret. If you use the Data Ferret, there are
2,982 variables in the longitudinal file, and you can choose among these
variables.

Click on the variable of interest, hold down the control button, and
then pick other variables. You would then click on Browse/Select
Highlighted Variables, click on Select All Variables, and click on OK.
To download the variables, go to Step 2 at the top of the page and click
on download. From there you will have a variety of formats to download
the data (including SAS, SPSS, Stata, and Excel).
The data and codebooks are available at http://www.census.gov/spd/
spdmrg.html, or through Data Ferret.
 Secondary Datasets 131

UNITED STATES CENSUS

The United States Census is a decennial count of the population residing
in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas on April 1 every
10 years. As required by the Constitution (Article 1, Section 2), Congress
took the first census in 1790. Short forms collect count information from
everyone in the country while long forms, collecting social, economical
and housing information, are sent to approximately 17% of the popula-
tion. With the 2010 Census, the American Community Survey, an annual
continuous survey, replaces the decennial long form.
The Census Bureau works with the United States Postal Service and
local government officials to create the distribution list for the forms.
Forms are mailed out in March, with follow-up postcards sent to non-
responders mailed on April 1. The 2000 Census had a response rate of
67%, an increase from the 1990 rate of 65%.
Questions on both the short and the long form may be revised,
deleted, or added to take into account shifting conventions or the need
for new types of information. For instance, the 2000 Census included a
new question about grandparents as caregivers and created the opportu-
nity for respondents to identify with multiple race categories.
The Census data are analyzed at various levels, summarized into
two categories: legal and administrative entities and statistical entities.
The legal and administrative entities include congressional districts,
counties, incorporated places such as cities and towns, minor civil divi-
sions (e.g., District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas),
states, and voting districts. Statistical entities include block groups;
Census-determined areas (e.g., blocks, county divisions, designated
places, regions, and tracts); metropolitan, rural, urban and urbanized
areas; zip code tabulation areas; and public use microdata areas, which
are areas created for use with Public Use Microdata Samples. Data are
also available for American Indian, Alaska native and native Hawaiian
entities and areas.
Census data are available on the Census website, with the primary
distribution tool being the American Fact Finder (AFF). The AFF, which
originated with the 2000 Census, also includes information and data
from others surveys conducted by the U.S. Census, including the 1990
census, the American Community Survey and the Economic Census.
Data from the long form and American Community Survey are available
132 Secondary Data Analysis

through the Public Use Microdata Samples, data extracts that researchers
may use to conduct their own statistical analyses with variables of inter-
est. The Census Bureau also releases summary files and other data and
tables useful for a variety of research. Researchers may also request spe-
cial tabulations, for a fee, from the Census Bureau for a variety of their
surveys.
Data from the Census are also available on DVD for the 2000 Census
and on CD for some previous decennial censuses. Note that you can also
do this same type of work by using the Census Bureau’s Data Ferret
(http://dataferrett.census.gov/TheDataWeb/launchDFA.html) to down-
load data for the 1990 and 2000 Censuses. The 2000 Census can also be
downloaded as an SAS export file at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/library/
cdeftp.htm, where many other data files are located, including the 1970
Census, and the County and City Data books for many years. While gen-
eral Census Bureau’s website (http://www.Census.gov) may be a conve-
nient way to access the decennial census, the DVDs are probably a much
easier way of getting information at small area levels for the nation. For
example, many of the datasets described in this book provide geocode
information at the Census tract level. To use the web page to download
all of that tract information would be very time consuming. One can
get data at any level of Census aggregation (Census tract, Primary
Metropolitan Statistical Area [PMSA]), on the DVD. For example, to get
Census tract information, you need to first install the DVD. Let’s say that
you would like to get information at the Census tract level on the number
of people at particular levels of income and numbers of people by race.
You can determine percentages of people in these conditions by dividing
by the population in the area you are examining. Your first step is know-
ing which data files to use. For Census tract information, you would use
Census SF3 US 2000 US_2 Data on the DVD for workspace, as shown in
the following page.
You next need to click on the second tab, pick geography, and choose
State (40), County (50), and Census Tract by County (140). This is the
way to uniquely identify census tract information. If you wanted to get
information at the zip code level, you would use the US_3 file, with
geographic identifiers 40, 50, and 871. For Metropolitan Statistical Areas
(MSAs), use file US_2, with geographic identifiers 30, 390, and 395. And
for Census place, use file US_2, with geographic identifiers as 40 and 160.
 Secondary Datasets 133

Next, go to “output,” where you will give the file a name and save it
to a location on your disk (please see the first figure shown in the follow-
ing page).
If you are merging this data onto another dataset, you do not want to
create the data as a summary. If you would simply like the information as
it is, you can create the data as a summary.
You will next go to simple variables and add on all the variables that
you would like, including the geographic identifier variables (which is in
134 Secondary Data Analysis

a separate folder), state (G11), county (G12), and tract (G21). These
variables are given by housing and person variables. Choose whichever
variables you would like, and click on “select” to move them over to the
output variables. Chosen here are simple variables by person for family
income, population, and race.

You can then choose to customize your variables in this program if

you would like by going to “Custom Variables,” where you can add,
subtract, divide, or use other formulas to come up with new variables.
 Secondary Datasets 135

I prefer to use SAS or some other statistical program to do this work after
I have outputted the data.
Click on “Finished,” and you should get your variables in an .CSV
file, which you can open in Excel. You can then use Stata Transfer to
transfer the data into SAS, Stata, or SPSS to more easily use the data.
Thus, in SAS, you could write a file that looks something like the
following to get the percentage of people of a particular race, or the
percentage of people in a particular income group. You will want to
delete records that do not have census tract information so, here, there is
an “if” statement indicating that the record should be deleted unless tract
information is available. The file will contain information on states,
which you will not want in your file. Note that the memory in your Excel
file may not be able to open this large dataset. You can either increase the
memory on Excel, or simply go right to transferring the data to SAS,
SPSS, or Stata, which will contain all of the information that was created
in the Census file.
data in5.tract4a;set out1.tract;
t101=p001001;*population in the area;
if p006001>0 then t151=p006002/p006001;*% white;
if p006001>0 then t152=p006003/p006001;*% black;
if p006001>0 then tAsian=p006005/p006001;*% Asian;
if p006001>0 then t2race=p006008/p006001;*% 2 or
more races;
if p007001>0 then t155=p007010/p007001;*% Latino;

if p076001>0 then t800=p076002/p076001;*% of

families with income under $10,000;
if p076001>0 then t801=p076003/p076001;*% of
families with income $10,000-14;
if p076001>0 then t802=p076004/p076001;*% of
families with income $14,000-19999;
if p076001>0 then t803=p076005/p076001;*% of
families with income $20,000-24,999;
if p076001>0 then t804=p076006/p076001;*% of
families with income $25,000-29,999;
if p076001>0 then t805=p076007/p076001;*% of
families with income $30,000-34,999;
136 Secondary Data Analysis

if p076001>0 then t806=p076008/p076001;*% of

families with income $35,000-39,999;
if p076001>0 then t807=p076009/p076001;*% of
families with income $40,000-44,999;
if p076001>0 then t808=p076010/p076001;*% of
families with income $50,000-59,999;
if p076001>0 then t809=p076011/p076001;*% of
families with income $60,000-74,999;
if p076001>0 then t810=p076012/p076001;*% of
families with income $75,000-99,999;
if p076001>0 then t811=p076013/p076001;*% of
families with income $100,000-124,999;
if p076001>0 then t812=p076014/p076001;*% of
families with income $125,000-149,999;
if p076001>0 then t813=p076015/p076001;*% of
families with income $150,000-199,999;
if p076001>0 then t814=p076016/p076001;*% of
families with income $200,000+;

if tract>0;
proc sort; by state county tract;
run;

If you were to then merge the Census file for Census tract data onto
another dataset, you would use the census identifiers, state, county, and
tract, to do this merge. This will involve sorting the data by these three
variables (in the order given above), for both files (Census file and the file
you are merging to, such as the PSID, or another dataset that has census
identifiers).

WELFARE, CHILDREN, AND FAMILIES: A THREE CITY STUDY

Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three City Study (http://web.jhu.
edu/threecitystudy) collects data, post-welfare reform, on the well-being
of low-income children and families and the strategies families have used
to respond to welfare reform, such as employment, education and train-
ing, residential mobility, and fertility, and the effect of those strategies on
 Secondary Datasets 137

children’s health, development, and use of social services. Data were

collected from families in low-income neighborhoods in Boston,
Chicago, and San Antonio in three waves: 1999, 2000–2001, and 2005–
2006. This study utilizes three interrelated components: longitudinal
surveys, embedded development studies, and contextual, comparative
ethnographic studies.
Wave 1 (March–December 1999) includes a random sample of
approximately 2,400 low-income households with children between the
ages of 0 to 4 or 10 to 14 years. In Wave 2 (September 2000–July 2001)
80 percent of children in Wave 1 were re-interviewed; these children
were then between the ages of 1 and 6 and 11 and 16 years. In those cases
in which the caregiver was no longer the same as in Wave 1, a modified
instrument was used to incorporate the new caregiver into the new study
(e.g., asking when the child came to reside with her and reasons for no
longer living with previous caregiver). The original caregiver continued
to be interviewed, but child information was gathered from the new
caregiver. The Wave 2 sample includes 2,158 focal children, 2,187 new
and original caregivers and 63 separated caregivers (the category given
to caregivers when an older child is living independently). In Wave 3
(February 2005 and February 2006), focal children were re-interviewed,
as were continuing, new, and separated caregivers, representing 79.7%
of the original Wave 1 sample. Focal children were between the ages of
5 and 10 or 15 and 20 years. In this wave, new caregivers were those who
were new to Wave 3; new caregivers in Wave 2 were listed as continuing
caregivers and interviewed only if they continued as caregivers into
Wave 3. Wave 3 included 114 independent youths and 229 separated
caregivers. Approximately 75% and 90% of Wave 3 agreed to participate
in the administrative records and school studies, respectively.
The longitudinal study collected data from female caregivers and a
focal child. Caregivers and older children participated in in-person inter-
views using a computerized instrument. Researchers collected data from
younger children through tests and assessments. Caregivers provided
information such as demographics, education, welfare participation,
father involvement, positive behaviors, neighborhoods, financial strain,
domestic violence, illegal activities, income, and health. The older
children’s interviews were used to collect data on schooling, physical
measurements, mother-child relationships and activities, father-child
138 Secondary Data Analysis

relationships, parental monitoring, delinquency, and sex and pregnancy.

The assessment of the younger children looked at physical measure-
ments, and ages and stages. The third wave of data collection also
included an administrative records study and a school study, collecting
agency and school/teacher based data on employment-, service-, and
school-related variables, going back to 1997. Wave 3 youths living inde-
pendently from caregivers provided additional information relating to
their income, union history, household membership, and work and
welfare experience.
The embedded development study collected data through interviews
with maternal caregivers, nonmaterial primary caregivers, and biological
fathers, as well as observational data within the home. Researchers con-
ducted this study, with a sample of 737 children, only in Wave 1, when
the children were between the ages of 2 and 4 years old, and Wave 2,
when the children were between the ages of 3 and 6 years old. This study
involved a home visit with the female caregiver and child that included
videotaping caregiver-child interactions and a caregiver interview, col-
lecting data on social networks and relationships, child temperament,
and the mothers’ ability to balance work and family life. Researchers
interviewed the child’s nonmaternal primary caregiver, collecting data
on the number of hours per week the child is in care, fees, and child-staff
ratio. Researchers also interviewed the biological father, gathering infor-
mation including demographic information, psychological functioning
and involvement in illegal activities, involvement with child and parent-
ing practices, and ratings of the child. Time diary studies were also used.
The ethnography study collected data on an additional 256 non-
randomly chosen children and families who resided in the same neigh-
borhoods as the respondents. Researchers interviewed or observed the
families once or twice a month for 12 to 18 months, and then every
6 months until 2003. Two hundred and twelve of these families were
chosen because they had a child aged 2 to 4 years old during the study
recruitment period (June 1999–December 2000). The other 44 were
chosen because they had a disabled child between the ages of 0 and 8.
This sample was recruited from Head Start; Women, Infants, and
Children (WIC); neighborhood community centers; and churches.
This study includes variables for child abuse/neglect, such as whether
parental absence is due to abuse or neglect; child emotional well-being;
development; mental, emotional, and behavioral problems and whether
 Secondary Datasets 139

any of these types of problems caused them to seek professional services;

caregiver mental health; foster care; school status, involvement and
atmosphere, including information on current level, grades, self-assessed
current academic status, and overall safety and atmosphere; father, care-
giver, and child health information, including insurance coverage, dis-
ability status and diseases, whether the child and caretaker have insurance,
general health and disability information about the primary adult,
whether health issues are causing absences from school, and whether
health was a reason for separation between children and adults; neigh-
borhood information collected from the child and adult; food insecurity;
participation in government programs; child and adult illegal drug use;
child and adult sexual activity; and dating and domestic violence, includ-
ing rape and child physical/sexual abuse.
The data include an assortment of welfare variables such as time
limits of benefits received and what affects those time limits, if the rules
of welfare were not being followed and the reasons and repercussions for
not following these rules, and if the family has tried to manipulate the
system to its advantage. Teachers are asked whether the children she
teaches receive welfare.
The data also include extensive information on diseases in the
context of whether they prevent individuals from activities or require
that they need special help at home. Diseases included are numerous,
including anemia, epilepsy or seizures, asthma, food or digestive allergy,
arthritis, diabetes, and sickle cell anemia. Information is also provided
on presence of a sexually transmitted disease in the focal child, including
genital herpes, HPV, HIV infection, and AIDS.
Neighborhood information in the study includes neighborhood
friends of the child and the life goals of these friends, their popularity
among people in their neighborhood, and neighborhood kids’ thoughts
about school and grades. Neighborhood information is also provided in
the adult questionnaire and separated, continuing, and new caregiver
questionnaires; information includes whether or not a bad neighbor-
hood is the reason why a child does not live with his or her biological
mother, and whether the child’s father lives in the main adult’s neighbor-
hood. There is also a section of the main adult questionnaire dedicated
to neighborhoods. Topics include the level of responsibility of the
neighborhood, for example whether neighbors would take action if
children were seen skipping school, painting graffiti, being disrespectful,
140 Secondary Data Analysis

or getting into fights. Other topics include trustworthiness of neighbors,

and overall atmosphere and safety of the local school (for example, infor-
mation on whether it is close-knit, the presence of assaults, open drug
deals, burglaries, gangs, and the lack of police). Some economic topics,
like ability and amount main adult takes out in loans at the neighbor-
hood “money store,” are also included.
Questions about food insecurity are included in the data, such as
whether there was food insecurity in the last 12 months, with questions
involving lack of necessary amount of food, need to cut the size of meals
or skip meals for children and adults, weight loss associated with lack
of food, and receipt of food from a church or a food bank within the past
30 days. Wave 3 also includes a Food Insecurity Total Score for continu-
ing, new, and separated caregivers
The study provides information on illegal drugs, such as child’s use
of hard drugs in the past 12 months; amount of child’s friends who use
or sell drugs; presence of drugs in the home environment; drugs such as
marijuana, cocaine, and heroin sold by father; drug use by the main
adult, separated, new, and continuing caregivers in general or in exchange
for prostitution; and likelihood that the child will engage in drug use,
from the main adult’s perspective.
The data provide information on sexual activity, such as the child’s
view of his or her peers’ sexual activity, age during first act of sexual
intercourse, age of partner during first act of sexual intercourse, and
trading sex for drugs and issues of sexual abuse.
Data from the Three City Study have been used to study various
aspects of welfare and poverty. Some research has looked into the issue of
violence and abuse, such as the correlation between violence and psycho-
logical distress in low-income urban women (Hill, Mossakowski, &
Angel, 2007), partner violence with particular interest in Hispanic
subgroups (Frias & Angel, 2005), the effect of physical and sexual abuse
on marriage and cohabitation (Cherlin, Burton, Hurt, & Purvin, 2004),
and the relationships among domestic violence, welfare, and low-wage
work (Bell, 2003). The Three City Study data have also been used to
study family- and neighborhood-related topics, such as father involve-
ment from both the father’s and mother’s perspective in low-income
minority families (Coley & Morris, 2002), grandmother’s involvement in
young adolescents (Pittman, 2007), creating family time in low-income
communities (Tubbs, Roy, & Burton, 2005), the connections among
 Secondary Datasets 141

neighborhood disorder, psychological distress, and abuse of alcohol

(Hill & Angel, 2005), the relationship between out of school care and
problem behavior (Coley, Morris, & Hernandez, 2004), and the correla-
tions among welfare, work, and changes in mothers’ living arrangements
in low-income families (Cherlin & Fomby, 2004). Studies have also
examined issues involving public assistance, like use among U.S.-born
children of immigrants (Fomby & Cherlin, 2004); the advantages and
disadvantages to shifting from welfare to work (Moffitt & Winder, 2005);
household insurance coverage among low-income families (Angel, Frias,
& Hill, 2005); the relationship between nonfinancial factors and entry
and exit in the TANF program (Moffitt, 2003); and experiences with
sanctions and case closings for noncompliance among welfare recipients
(Cherlin, Bogen, Quane, & Burton, 2002). Other research study topics
that use Three City data include child development (Votruba-Drzal,
Coley, & Chase-Lansdale, 2004) and the social capital of low-income
African-American and Latin-American mothers (Dominguez & Watkins,
2003).
All of the public and restricted-release data for the three waves of the
longitudinal study are available through the Inter-University Consortium
for Political and Social Research. The public data and the embedded
development study data are also available through Sociometrics, Inc.
Data from the ethnography study is not currently available. Through the
ICPSR and through the Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA),
developed by the computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM)
at the University of California, Berkeley, you can also run simple statis-
tics online http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi-bin/SDA/ICPSR/hsda?dsdr
+04701-0004, in a page that looks like the figure shown at the top of the
following page.
You can either run these cross tabulations or examine variable fre-
quencies, for example, to see if there is a large sample size for particular
variables of interest to you. Here, I show the frequencies for whether the
respondent believes that she or he will still be alive at age 35. Please see
the second figure shown in the next page.
To download all or some of the different data sets in SAS transport,
SPSS, or Stata formats, go to downloads (see figure 4.25, at the top of the
page), then choose the types of formats and the data sets you would like.
Download page looks like the figure given in page 143.
The picture shows all of the data sets available for public use.
142 Secondary Data Analysis
Secondary Datasets 143
144 Secondary Data Analysis

Even though the files are compressed, they are still very large, in part
because of the large PDF files that document the data. I downloaded
these files in SAS, which then gives you the input statements, variable
formats, and missing value codes. For the focal child interview for
Wave 3, the SAS code looks like this:

Note that the infile statement is blank upon receipt of the file and
must be filled in with the proper file and file location. The logical record
length information is given in the file. Above these statements are the
variable formats and below are the missing value codes. All of this infor-
mation is extremely valuable in saving coding time. The “caseid” is the
unique identifier for the child, and you can merge all data sets for the
focal child by sorting and merging by caseid.
 Appendix Tables

A ppendix Tables 1 and 2 give summaries of the data sets presented in

this book. Appendix Table 1 shows the sample size, whether the data
set is longitudinal or cross-sectional, the representativeness of the data,
age of the primary respondents, the persons interviewed and records
available. In Appendix Table 2, a general summary of variable types
available (not specific variables) in each of the data sets is presented. I do
not specify which years the particular variables are available, only that
they are available in some of the years. Appendix Table 3 gives websites
for the codebooks for each of the data sets. Some codebooks are not
available on the web and I make note of that as well.

145
146 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 1 Summary Tables

Data Sets Sample Size CS or LG Years Available
Adoption and Foster Adoptions – CS but data 1995-2005
Care Analysis and 2005:51,485; 2004: can be used
Reporting System 52,468; 2003:50,342; longitudinally
(AFCARS) 2002:52,881; for some states
2001:50,599;
2000:51,050;
1999:46,772;
1998:36,694;
1997:22,678;
1996:16,010;
1995:14,786 Foster
Care – 2005:801,200;
2004:800,128;
2003:801,018;
2002:814,428;
2001:813,817;
2000:811,855;
1999:814,360;
1998:724,601;
1997:390,481;
1996:335,836;
1995:280,691
Child Neglect: Cross 10,187 children LG 1993-2001
Sector Service Paths
and Outcomes
(CSSPO)
Common Core of 97,000 public LG Data is collected
Data (CCD) schools and 18,000 annually
public school beginning in
districts in the 50 1986 until
states, District of present; different
Columbia, data began being
Department of collected a
Defense schools, and different times,
outlying areas but 1986 was the
earliest
Continuing Survey of 1994-96: 16,103 CS 1989-91; 1994-
Food Intake by individuals; 96; 1998
Individuals (CSFII) Supplemental (Supplemental
Children’s Survey Children’s
1998: 5,559 children Survey)
added to data from
4,253 children from
1994-96
 Appendix Tables 147

Representativeness Ages of respondents Persons interviewed

Representative of cases of Less than one to 20 years States send data to the
foster care and adoption of age Children’s Census
that occur through public Bureau concerning
welfare agencies each child in foster
care and each child
that is adopted

Nationally representative Children ages 18 and No interviews; data

of children receiving under was only
AFDC administrative and
census
Nationally representative Not applicable Public schools
and data is comparable (elementary and
across states secondary), school
districts, education
agencies (local and
state)

Nationally representative All ages; Supplemental Respondents

Children’s Survey 1998:
0 to 9

Continued
148 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 1 Summary Tables (Continued)

Data Sets Sample Size CS or LG Years Available
Current Population About 50,000 to CS Data is collected
Survey (CPS) 100,000 households on a monthly
basis for over 50
years
Development Phase 1: 2,030 LG 2002-03; 2003-04
Victimization Survey children; Phase 2:
(DVS) 1,467 children
Early Childhood birth cohort: 14,000 LG Birth cohort:
Longitudinal Survey children;In total: 2001-02, 2003-
(ECLS) 19,173 children 04, 2005-6, 2006,
2007-08;
Kindergarten
cohort: 1998-99,
1999-2000, 2002,
2004, 2007
Fragile Family and Wave I:4,898 LG Initial interviews
Child Wellbeing families (including took place
Study (FFCWS) 3,712 unwed couples between February
and 1,186 married 1998 and
couples); Wave II September 2000,
(after 1 year): 4270 each respondent
mothers of whom had a one-year,
1029 were married three-year, and
and 3241 were five- year follow-
unmarried at the up, then a nine
time of birth; Wave year follow-up in
III (after 3 years): 2007-09
4140 mothers of
whom 1012 were
married and 3128
were unmarried;
Wave IV: 4055
mothers of whom
975 were married
and 3080 were
unmarried (after five
years).
General Social Survey Around 1,500 each CS Every year since
(GSS) year 1972 (excluding
1979, 1981, 1992)
and every two
years beginning
in 1994
 Appendix Tables 149

Representativeness Ages of respondents Persons interviewed

Nationally representative Data focuses on ages 16 Respondents
of the civilian and over
noninstitutionalized
population
Nationally representative Ages 2 to 17 Children and
caregivers

Nationally representative Birth cohort: 9 months to Parents, children,

kindergarten or higher; teachers, school
kindergarten cohort: administrators
kindergarten to eighth
grade

Nationally representative Birth to 9 years old Mothers, fathers,

of cities with populations children
over 200,000

Nationally representative Adults and young adults Respondents

Continued
150 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 1 Summary Tables (Continued)

Data Sets Sample Size CS or LG Years Available
Health and Wave 1 (1992): LG Biennial surveys
Retirement Study 12,654; Wave 2 beginning in
(HRS) (1994): 11,597; Wave 1992
3 (1996): 11,199;
Wave 4 (1998):
10,857; Wave 5
(2000): 10,377; Wave
6 (2002): 10,142;
Wave 7 (2004): 9,759
Longitudinal Studies 1354 children and LG 1991-2004
of Child Abuse and their caregivers
Neglect
(LONGSCAN)
National Child Abuse Child file data – CS State-level data
and Neglect Data 2006 :3,477,988; began in 1990;
System (NCANDS) 2005: 3,461,872; Case-level data
2004: 3,134,026; began in 1995;
2003: 1,216,626; Puerto Rica
2002: 1,216,626; began submitting
2001: 1,216,626; in 2005
2000: 1,032,362 -
DCDC J/K files –
1999: 783,467/227,
064; 1998: 660,
081/221,967; 1997:
376,919/167,738;
1996: 383,275/157,
962; 1995: 630,
594/258,206
National Educational 1,000 schools, almost LG 1988, 1990, 1992,
Longitudinal Survey 25,000 students, 1994, 2000
(NELS) 5,000 teachers; 2nd
follow-up included
15,000 parents; by
year 2000, 12,144
observations
 Appendix Tables 151

Representativeness Ages of respondents Persons interviewed

Nationally representative Ages 50 and over Respondents and
of Americans over the age spouses
of 50

Nationally representative Ages 4 or less through 18 Children and

of children who have years old caregivers
suffered maltreatment

Nationally representative Data discusses children Child and protective

of children whose alleged under 18 years of age agencies
and victimization were
reported to child and
protective services

Te sample of schools 13 or 14(eighth grade) to Parents, students,

represents the 40,000 25 or 26(eighth years out teachers, school
public and private schools of high school) administrators
in the U.S.; the sample of
students represents the
3,000,000 eighth graders
attending schools in 1988

Continued
152 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 1 Summary Tables (Continued)

Data Sets Sample Size CS or LG Years Available
National Health and NHANES I: 31,973; CS NHANES I:
Nutrition NHANES II: 27,801; 1971-75;
Examination Survey NHANES III: 33,994; NHANES II:
(NHANES) HHANES: 16,000; 1976-80;
NHANES 1999-00: NHANES III:
9,965; NHANES 1988-94; 1999-
01-02: 11,039 2000, 2001-02,
2003-04, 2005-
06, 2007-08
National Wave I: over 20,000 LG 1994-1995, 1995-
Longitudinal Study young people; Wave 1996, 2001-2002
of Adolescent Health II: about 14,000
(Add Health) young people; Wave
III: eligible people
for Wave I and 1,500
of their sexual
partners
National NLS of Older Men: LG NLS of Older
Longitudinal Surveys 5,020; NLS of Men: 1966-1990;
(NLS) Mature Women: NLS of Mature
5,083; NLS of Young Women: 1967-
Men: 5,225; NLS of 2003; NLS of
Young Women: Young Men:
5,159; NLSY79: 1966-1981; NLS
12,686; Children and of Young
Young Adults of Women: 1968-
NLSY79: 5,255; 2003; NLSY79:
NLSY97: 8,984 1979-ongoing;
Children and
Young Adults of
NLSY79:
1986-ongoing;
NLSY97:
1997-ongoing
 Appendix Tables 153

Representativeness Ages of respondents Persons interviewed

Nationally representative Birth to age 74 Respondents, family
of all noninstitutionalized
persons

Nationally representative Respondents were first Parents, children,

of adolescents interviewed between the school administrators,
grades of 7-12, then the romantic/sexual
final wave of interviews partners
was between the ages of
18 and 26

Nationally representative NLS of Older Men: Ages Respondents and

of the population born in 45 to 59; NLS of Mature children of
the years specified by the Women: Ages 30 to 44; respondents for
cohort, but each cohort NLS of Young Men: Ages Children and Young
has specific issues 14 to 24; NLS of Young Adults of NLSY79
pertaining to Women: Ages 14 to 24;
representativeness. E.g. NLSY79: Ages 14 to 21;
Children of the NYLS79 Children and Young
is representative of Adults of NLSY79: Birth
children born to parents to age 14 for children and
who themselves were 15 and older for young
born between 1957 and adults; NLSY97: Ages 12
1964 and were living in to 16
the U.S. in 1978

Continued
154 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 1 Summary Tables (Continued)

Data Sets Sample Size CS or LG Years Available
National Medical NMES-1: 13,500 CS NMES-1: 1977;
Expenditure Survey households; NMES- NMES-2: 1987;
(NMES) 2’s Household MEPS: 1996-2008
Survey: 14,000
households, NMES-
2’s Survey of
American Indians
and Alaskan Natives:
2,000 individuals,
NMES-2’s
Institutional
Population
Component:11,000
individuals and
2,000 institutions;
MEPS (Medical
Expenditure Panel
Survey)’s Household
Component: 10,500
households, MEPS’s
Medical Provider
Component: 22,000
health care
providers, MEPS’s
Insurance
Component: 10,000
employers, insurers,
and unions, MEPS’s
Nursing Home
Component: not
listed
National Survey of 40,000 respondents CS 1997, 1999, 2002
American Families
(NSAF)

National Survey of 5,501 children LG 1999-2005

Child and Adolescent
Wellbeing (NSCAW)
 Appendix Tables 155

Representativeness Ages of respondents Persons interviewed

Nationally representative NMES-1 and NMES-2:
of the civilian population respondents and
nursing homes; MEPS:
respondents, insurers,
medical providers, and
nursing homes

Nationally representative 16 to 64 years old Respondents

of the
noninstitutionalized
population under 65
years of age
Nationally representative Ages 0 to 14 years old Children, parents,
of children in contact caregivers, caseworkers
with the welfare system

Continued
156 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 1 Summary Tables (Continued)

Data Sets Sample Size CS or LG Years Available
NICHD Study of Phase 1: 1,364 LG 1991-1994, 1994-
Early Childcare and children; Phase II & 2000, 2000-2005
Youth Development III: 1,100 of original
children; Phase IV:
1,000 of original
children
Panel Study of Original 1968 LG 1968 to present;
Income Dynamics sample size: 4,802 PSID went from
(PSID) families and 18,230 annual to
individuals; 8,289 biennial data
families in 2007, and collection in 1997
23,508 individuals.
Panel Study of 3,653 children in LG 1997; 2002-03
Income Dynamics, 1997, 2,907 children
Child Development in 2002.
Supplement

Project on Human Neighborhood data: LG Neighborhood

Development in respondents; data: 1994-95,
Chicago Individual data: 2001-02;
Neighborhoods respondents and Individual data:
(PHDCN) their primary 1994-97, 1997-
caregivers 99, 2000-02

Public-Use 1% and 5% samples CS 1940 to present;

Microdata Samples generally cover areas data is collected
(PUMS) with 100,000 every 10 years
persons; 1 in 1000
samples are not
listed
School Data Direct In 2007, there were CS Data is collected
100,308 schools in by state, by
14,556 school school district,
districts in the 50 and by school
states. Example of and is available
available data: There online for about
are 48 variables for the last decade
Grade 9 data in
Alaska.
 Appendix Tables 157

Representativeness Ages of respondents Persons interviewed

Nationally representative Phase I: birth - 3 years Children, mothers
of children ages 15 and old; Phase II: 54 months
younger - 1st grade; Phase III: 2nd
grade - 6th grade; Phase
IV: 14-15 years old

Nationally representative All ages Families and

of individuals and the individuals
family units they live in

Nationally representative Birth to 12 years of age in

Children, primary
wave I, and 5 to 17 in caregivers, other
wave 2. caregivers, school
administrators,
teachers.
Representative of Chicago Neighborhood data: over Neighborhood data:
and the ages used to 18 years of age; Individual 8,782 respondents in
define the cohorts data: 7 different cohorts 343 neighborhood
(birth, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 clusters; Individual
years of age) data: 6,226 children,
adolescents, young
adults, and their
primary caregivers
Nationally representative All ages Respondents

Nationally representative Not applicable Schools, school

districts, and states

Continued
158 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 1 Summary Tables (Continued)

Data Sets Sample Size CS or LG Years Available
Survey of Income 1984 Wave I: 19, 878 LG 1984-1993, 1996,
and Program original households; 2000, 2001, 2004,
Participation (SIPP) 1985 Wave I: 13,349 2008
original households;
1986 Wave I: 11,513
original households;
1987 Wave I: 11,689;
1988 Wave I: 11,774;
1989 Wave I: 11,892;
1990 Wave I: 18,363;
1991 Wave I: 14,316;
1992 Wave I: 19,582;
1993 Wave I: 19,583;
1996 Wave I: 36,805;
2001 Wave I: 35,102;
2004 Wave I: 43,711
Survey of Program 1992-93 SIPP: 54,600 LG 1992-93, 1997-
Dynamics (SPD) households; 1997 2002
SPD: 34,609
households; 1998
SPD: 19,129; 1999
SPD: 19,303; 2000
SPD: 23,258; 2001
SPD: 29,341; 2002
SPD: 22,694
U.S. Census Size of the CS Data is collected
population every 10 years.
1990 & 2000
available on-line.
Some previous
years available on
CD.
Welfare, Children, Wave I: 2,400 LG Wave I: March-
and Families: A households; Wave II: Dec 1999; Wave
Three City Study 2,158 focal children II: 2000-01; Wave
with 2,187 III: 2005-06
continuing or new
caregivers; Wave III:
79.9% of original
sample children
from Wave I
Note: LG=longitudinal; CS=cross sectional
 Appendix Tables 159

Representativeness Ages of respondents Persons interviewed

Nationally representative Ages 15 to 64 Respondents
of noninstitutionalized
individuals between the
ages of 15 and 64

Nationally representative All ages Respondents

Nationally representative All ages Respondents

Representative of low- Wave I: 0 to 4 and 10 to Children, caregivers

income families and 14; Wave II: 1 to 6 or 11 (particularly female)
children in three observed to 16; Wave III: 5 to 10 or
cities (Boston, San 15 to 20
Antonio, and Chicago)

Continued
160 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 2
Child
Child Child Abuse & Emotional Mental
Data Set Questions Neglect Well Being Health
AFCARS X X X
Child Neglect X X X X
CCD
CSFII
CPS
DVS X X X X
ECLS X
FFCWS X X X
GSS X X X X
HRS X
LONGSCAN X X X X
NCANDS X X X X
NELS X X X
Add Health X X X X
NLS X X X
NMES/MEPS
NSAF X X X
NSCAW X X X X
NHANES X
NICHD X X
PSID X X X
PSID, CDS X X X X
PHDCN X X X
PUMS
SDD X
SIPP X X X
SPD X
U.S. Census
A Three-City Study X X X X
 Appendix Tables 161

Foster School Overall Health

Care Adoption Education Test Scores Health Coverage
X X X - X -
X X X X
X X
X X
X X
X X X - X
X X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X
X X X
X X X X -
X X
X X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X X
X X X
X - X - X X
X X X X
X X X
X X X
X X X X
X X X X X X
X X X X
X
X X
X X X X X
X X X
X
X X X X X X
Continued
162 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 2 (Continued)

Physical
Disability Health Prescription activity/
Data Set status Problems Drug Use Smoking weight
AFCARS -
Child Neglect X X
CCD
CSFII
CPS X X
DVS
ECLS X X
FFCWS X X X X
GSS X X
HRS X X X X
LONGSCAN
NCANDS X
NELS X X
Add Health X X X X X
NLS X X X
NMES/MEPS X X X X
NSAF X X
NSCAW X X
NHANES X X X
NICHD X X X X
PSID X X X X X
PSID, CDS X X X X
PHDCN X X X X X
PUMS X
SDD
SIPP X
SPD X X
U.S. Census
A Three-City Study X X
 Appendix Tables 163

General Neighborhood Neighborhood Food

well-being Perception Characteristics Diet Insecurity
- -
X
X
X X
X
X X
X X X X
X X X X
X X
X X
X X

X X
X X X
X X X X

X
X X
X X
X X X
X X X X X
X X
X
X
X X X
X X

X X X
Continued
164 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 2 (Continued)

AFDC/ Food
Data Set TANF Stamps SS, SSI Medicaid Medicare
AFCARS X X
Child Neglect X X X
CCD
CSFII X X X
CPS X X X X X
DVS X X
ECLS X X X X
FFCWS X X X X X
CSS X X X X
HRS X X X X
LONGSCAN - X X X
NCANDS X X X
NELS X X X X
Add Health X X X X
NLS X X X X
NMES/MEPS X X X X X
NSAF X X X X X
NSCAW X
NHANES X X X
NICHD X X X X
PSID X X X X X
PSID, CDS X X X X X
PHDCN
PUMS X X
SDD
SIPP X X X X X
SPD X X X X X
U.S. Census X
A Three-City X X X X
Study
 Appendix Tables 165

Crime/ Illegal Sexual

violence Alcohol Drugs Incarceration Activity Pregancy STDS
X X
X X X X X

X X X X
X X X X
X X X X
X X X
X X
X X X
X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X X X
X X X X X
X
-
X X X
X X
X X
X X X X X
X X X X X X
X X X X X X X

X
X X

X X X X X

Continued
166 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 2 (Continued)

Home
Dating Domestic Savings & Environ- Emotional
Data Set violence violence Wealth ment Support
AFCARS - X -
Child Neglect
CCD
CSFII X
CPS
DVS X X
ECLS X X
FFCWS X X X
GSS X X X
HRS X
LONGSCAN X
NCANDS X
NELS X
Add Health X X
NLS X X X
NMES/MEPS
NSAF X
NSCAW X X
NHANES X
NICHD X
PSID X
PSID CDS X X X
PHDCN X X X X
PUMS
SDD X
SIPP X X
SPD X X
U.S. Census
A Three-City X X X X X
Study
 Appendix Tables 167

Parental traits Family General General Adverse

& behaviors characteristics well-being behavior experiences

X X

X
X
X X
X X X
X X
X X X X
X X
X X X
X X
X X
X X
X X X X

X
X X
X
X X X X
X
X X X X
X X X
X

X X
X X X X
X
X X X

Continued
168 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 2 (Continued)

Service
Utlization
and character- Child Employment/
Data Set istics care job training Housing Military
AFCARS
Child Neglect X
CCD
CSFII X X
CPS X X X X
DVS
ECLS X X X
FFCWS X X X X
GSS X X X X X
HRS X X
LONGSCAN X
NCANDS X
NELS X X
Add Health X X X X
NLS X X X - X
NMES/MEPS X X X
NSAF X X X
NSCAW X X
NHANES X
NICHD X X
PSID X X X X
PSID,CDS X X X X X
PHDCN X X X
PUMS X X
SDD
SIPP X X X X X
SPD X X X X X
U.S. Census X X X
A Three-City X X X X X
Study
 Appendix Tables 169

State
Internet Use Religion Expenditures Attitudes Suicide Identifiers
X

X X
X
X X X
X X
X X
X

X
X X
X X
X X X
X X
X
X

X
X X X X
X X X X
X X X X -
X
X
- -
X

X X X

Continued
170 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 2 (Continued)

Agency/
Physical staff
Relation- activity/ Character- Develop-
Data Set Gambling ships Leisure weight istics ment
AFCARS
Child Neglect
CCD
CSFII
CPS
DVS X
ECLS X X
FFCWS
GSS X
HRS
LONGSCAN
NCANDS
NELS X X
Add Health X X X X
NLS X
NMES/MEPS X
NSAF X
NSCAW X
NHANES X
NICHD X X X
PSID X X
PSID,CDS X X X X
PHDCN - X X
PUMS
SDD
SIPP
SPD X
U.S. Census
A Three-City X X
Study
Note: Relationships often include parent-child relationships. Development often includes
child development.
 Appendix Tables 171

Appendix Table 3 Codebooks

Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS)
http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/AFCARS_
Guide_1995-1999.pdf
Child Neglect: Cross Sector Service Path and Outcomes
http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/116user.pdf
Common Core of Data (CCD)
http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/ccd/dnd
Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals
http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/csfii/dnd
Current Population Survey
http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/cps/dnd
Developmental Victimization Survey
http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/Ndacan/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/126user.pdf
Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey
Codebook is on the CD from the NCES.
Fragile Family and Child Well-Being Study (FFCWS)
http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/documentation.asp
http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/ff
General Social Survey (GSS)
http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website/Download/ -- data
http://publicdata.norc.org:41000/gss/documents//BOOK/Main%20Body.pdf
-- codebook
Health and Retirement Survey
http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/index.php?p=showcbk
For Longitudinal Studies Of Child Abuse And Neglect (LONGSCAN)
http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/Ndacan/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/144.pdf
http://www.iprc.unc.edu/longscan/pages/measelect/Measure%20Table%20%
28up%20through%20Age%2018%20Interviews%29.pdf
National Educational Longitudinal Study
(http://search.icpsr.umich.edu/IAED/query.html?col=abstract&op0=%2B&tx0
=national+education+longitudinal+study+of+1988+(nels)+series&ty0=p&fl0=
series%3A&op1=-&tx1=restricted&ty1=w&fl1=availability%3A&op2=%2B&tx
2=IAED&ty2=w&fl2=archive%3A&nh=50&rf=3)
National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS)
http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/
NCANDS_MultiYear_Guide.pdf
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/nhanesi.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/nhanesii.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhanes/nhanes3/ssnh3hrm.pdf
Continued
172 Appendix Tables

Appendix Table 3 Codebooks (Continued)

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health)

http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/codebooks
National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS)
http://www.bls.gov/nls/handbook/2005/selvarom.pdf
http://www.nlsinfo.org/nlsy97/nlsdocs/nlsy97/questionnaires/R1Youth-final.pdf
http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/data-collections/nls
National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES)/ Medical Expenditure Panel
Survey
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi-bin/bob/newark?study=6371&path=ICPSR
http://www.meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/survey_comp/survey.jsp
National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW)
http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/UserGuidePDFs/092_
Intro_to_NSCAW_Wave_1.pdf
NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD)
https://secc.rti.org/
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
http://simba.isr.umich.edu/Zips/ZipMain.aspx
https://simba.isr.umich.edu/Zips/ZipSupp.aspx#ACTSAV
Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Child Development Supplement
http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/CDS/wavesdoc.html
Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN)
www.icpsr.umich.edu/PHDCN
Public-Use Microdata Samples
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/PUMS/PUMS3.htm
http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/doc/pums.pdf
School Data Direct
http://www.schooldatadirect.org/
As of this writing, this web site is being updated but should be up soon.
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
http://www.census.gov/apsd/techdoc/sipp/sipp.html
http://www.bls.census.gov/sipp_ftp.html
Survey of Program Dynamics
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi-bin/bob/archive2?study=3594&path=ICPSR&
docsonly=yes
United States Census
http://usa.ipums.org/usa/volii/codebooks.shtml
Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three City Study
http://web.jhu.edu/threecitystudy/Public_Release/documentation.
html#Questionnaires
 Glossary

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) Data File This
is data that are in “raw” form, or generally, variables that are listed in columns,
with a different row for each observation. Some data may have many rows for
each individual. You will need to transform these types of data into one of the
main data software packages by using programming language within those pack-
ages. Often, data come with such programming so that the end user will not
have to. One reason for using ASCII format to download data is that the size of
the data is much smaller than if the data were in SAS, SPSS, or Stata format.
Computer-Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) A means of interviewing the
respondent, either by having an interviewer enter information into a computer
during the interview, or having the respondent enter information directly.

Cross-Sectional Data These are data that are collected over one period of time.
Cross-sectional data may be collected only once from one sample of people, or it
may be collected many times, over many periods, from different samples.
Fixed Effects Models These are generally models that are used with longitudinal
data, in which unobservable but permanent characteristics are controlled. For
example, fixed effect models can be used with siblings: For each variable, the
family mean is subtracted from the individual mean. In this way, variables in
which there are no differences among family members that are permanent and
unobserved (such as IQ level of the parent) are factored out of the model. These
models are often seen as being able to control for more factors than models that

173
174 Glossary

do not used fixed effects. Unobserved variables that are not permanent over time
are not controlled in these models.
Geocode Information This generally relates to the inclusion of information
related to the place of residence or other such information relating to the survey
member. Some data sets include only information such as the state, country, zip
code, census tract, or census block, and it is then up to the researcher to link data
(such as census data) with this link. Other data sets do not provide such links but
provide specific information relating to the geography of the sample member,
such as poverty rates, for specific geographical areas.

Identification Numbers Usually, each data set has a unique identification

number for each respondent or other unit. Often, when merging data sets
together, or when adding variables to your data file, you will need to sort, then
merge, your data by this identification number.

Longitudinal Data These are data that follow the same set of people over an
extended period of time. For example, people in the longitudinal data set may be
asked questions at given intervals of time, such as on a yearly or monthly basis.
These questions may be the same questions over time, or the researchers may ask
a set of core questions for each survey and another set of questions that differ at
each survey.
Oversampling A strategy to choose more than a representative number of people
from a particular group to ensure that more precise measurement can be made
for this group. For example, people with a particular mental disorder may be
oversampled in a particular data set because so few people in the population have
the disorder. If only a few people are chosen for the sample (as would most likely
be the case if a random sampling design were used), then it would be difficult to
examine relationships between this mental disorder and other factors. By overs-
ampling, and using sampling weights, more precise measurement can be made
and relationships can be more easily found. There is thus a lower likelihood of a
Type II error when examining the relationships between those with the mental
disorder and other factors.
Primary Data These are data that are collected by the investigator doing the
research by methods such as questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, diaries,
observation, or a variety of other methods.
Random Sampling This is a sampling method in which each individual in the
population, group, or universe has an equal chance of being selected into the
sample.
 Glossary 175

Response Rates The proportion of respondents who participate in the survey

when asked to. Attrition rates refer to the proportion of sample respondents that
leave the sample in a longitudinal design, due to refusal to partake in the sample,
death, or any other reason.

SAS A statistical software package used to statistically analyze data. Often,

researchers can download data in raw form form and use a SAS input statement
that includes the columns where variable data are located. Or, users can use a SAS
transport file, and proc copy to use the transport file.

Sampling Weights These are used to make samples representative of some group.
Statistical programs will often allow you to weight the data by these sampling
weights, and give higher weights to those who are undersampled (there are pro-
portionately fewer of them in the sample than in the population), and lower
weights to those who are oversampled (there are proportionately more of them
in the sample than in the population).

Secondary Data These are data that are collected by someone other than the
researcher conducting the research. Methods such as surveys, focus groups, ques-
tionnaires, and a variety of other methods may be used to collect the data.
Sibling Studies These are often used with fixed effects models. To use such
models, more than a single sibling must be surveyed in the data. Those who do
not have siblings, or who have all siblings with missing data for variables used in
statistical models, cannot be used in such models.
SPSS A statistical software package used to statistically analyze data.
STATA A statistical software package used to statistically analyze data.
Stratified Sampling This is a method of sampling in which the population is
divided into subgroups, and random samples are taken of each subgroup. This
may be done if a goal is to make sure that certain subgroups are highly
represented within the sample. For example, a number of samples stratify their
sampling by poverty level, to make sure that a large number of sample members
come from poor families. Sampling weights must then be used to make the
sample representative of the population being examined.
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 Index

Note: Page references followed by “t ” denote tables.

Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Child Abuse Prevention, Adoption

and Reporting System and Family Services Act of
(AFCARS), 5, 26–28 1998, 63
availability/ Child Abuse Prevention and
accessibility, 28 Treatment Act, 63
application, 27 Child Development Supplement
information, 27 (CDS), 5, 6, 7, 105–9, 122
AFCARS Report, The, 28 application, 108
Agency for Health Care Policy and availability/accessibility, 107, 108–9
Research, 86, 87 CDS-I, 105, 106, 109
Aid to Families with Dependent CDS-II, 105–6, 109
Children (AFDC), 28–30 CDS-III, 106, 109
alternative hypotheses, 19 information, 106–7
American Community Survey, 24, link to Census tract, 107–8
114–15, 131–32 link to PSID data, 107
American Fact Finder (AFF), Transition to Adulthood (TA)
131–32 Supplement, 105, 106, 109
American Housing Survey, 24 Child File, 63
American Standard Code for Child Neglect: Cross Sector Service
Information Interchange Paths and Outcomes (CN), 6,
(ASCII) Data File, 173 28–30
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring availability/accessibility, 30
(ADAM) Program, 25 application, 30
authorization of data sets, 20–21 information, 29
Children’s Residential History
Bureau of Census. See U.S. Census Calendar, SPD, 128–29
Bureau Columbia University
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 38, 86 Social Indicators Survey Center, 51
Combined Aggregate File (CAF),
Centers for Disease Control and 63–64
Prevention, 76 Combine study, 25

209
210 Index

Common Core of Data (CCD), 6, availability/accessibility, 40

30–33, 36t information, 39
availability/accessibility, 31, 33
information, 31 Data Analysis System (DAS), 47
Local Education Agency (School Data collection, 3, 20
District) Universe, 31 Data Ferret, 24, 40, 116, 117, 125, 130
Public School Universe, 31 Decennial Census of the Population
SAS data, 32–33, 34–35t and Housing, 24
school district fiscal data, 31 Decennial Public Use Microdata
state aggregate fiscal data, 31 Samples, 24
state aggregate nonfiscal data, 31 dependent variables, 18
Community Survey, 110–11, 114 Detailed Case Data Component
composite sampling, 94 (DCDC), 63
Computer-assisted personal Developmental Victimization Survey
interviews (CAPI), 53, (DVS), 6, 9, 40–44
94, 173 application, 44
questionnaire, 128 availability/accessibility, 44
Computer-assisted Survey Methods behavioral variables, 42–43
Program (CSM), 93, 141 health variables, 42
confidentiality of data sets, 20–21 household variables, 43
Consumer Expenditure Survey, 24 information, 42–43
Continuing Survey of Food Intake by neighborhood variables, 43
Individuals (CSFII), 7, 12, parental variables, 43
35–38 victimization variables, 42
application, 38
availability/accessibility, 38 Early Childhood Longitudinal
information, 37 Survey (ECLS), 5, 6, 7,
Supplemental Children’s Survey, 37 44–49
control variables, 19 application, 46–47
Coordinated Data, 120 availability/accessibility, 47
County and City Data, 132 birth cohort (ECLS-B), 44, 45
County Business Patterns, 24 information, 45–46
Crimes Against Children Research kindergarten class of 1998–1999
Center, 41 (ECLS-K), 44, 46
cross-sectional data sets, 12, 74, kindergarten class of 2010–2011
110, 173 (ECLS-K:2011), 44, 46
Current Population Survey (CPS), 7, SAS data, 48–49
11, 12, 24, 38–40, 128 Economic Census, 131
Annual Social and Economic
Supplement, 39 fixed-effects modeling, 14, 103–4, 173
application, 39–40 Food Insecurity Total Score, 141
 Index 211

Food Quality Protection Act of Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire

1996, 37 (JVC), 41
Fragile Families and Child Well-Being
Study (FFCWS), 5, 6, 7, Longitudinal Cohort Study, 111–12
10–11, 49–52 longitudinal data sets, 12, 14, 16,
application, 51–52 18, 174
availability/accessibility, 51, 52 Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse
information, 50–51 and Neglect (LONGSCAN),
6, 59–62
generalization of results, 20 application, 61–62
General Social Survey (GSS), 7, 52–55 attrition rates, 60
geocode information, 84, 174 availability/accessibility, 62
Growing Older in America: The Health information, 60–61
and Retirement Study, 57–58
Mathematica Policy Research, 11
Health and Retirement Study (HRS), Medical Expenditure Panel Survey
6, 7, 56–59 (MEPS), 7, 86, 87, 88–89
application, 58 application, 89
availability/accessibility, 58–59 availability/accessibility, 89
information, 57 Mortality Sample, 24
Health Care Financing Most knowledgeable adult (MKA), 91
Administration, 87
Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), National Ambulatory Medical Care
14, 112–13 Survey, 24
National Archive of Criminal Justice
identification numbers, 174 Data, 25, 113–14
identifiers, 16, 20 National Bureau of Economic
independent variables, 19 Research (NBER), 40
Indian Health Service (IHS), 88 National Center for Education
Infant Assessment Unit, 111, 112 Statistics, 30, 31–33, 47,
International Archive of Educational 73, 120
Data, 25, 47, 73 National Public Education Finance
International Social Survey Program Survey, 120
(ISSP), 52 SAS System The MEANS
application, 54 Procedure, 34–35t
availability/accessibility, 54–55 National Center for Health Services
information, 53–54 Research, 86
Inter-University Consortium for National Center for Health
Political and Social Research, Statistics, 87
(ICPSR), 14, 23–24, 40, 54, National Center on Child Abuse and
89, 93, 129, 141 Neglect (NCCAN), 59, 63
212 Index

National Child Abuse and Neglect NHANES II, 74

Data System (NCANDS), 6, 9, NHANES III, 74–75
63–66 National Health Interview Survey, 24
application, 65–66 National Hospital Ambulatory
availability/accessibility, 66 Medical Care Survey, 24
information, 64–65 National Institute on Aging, 10,
National Crime Victimization Survey 56, 82
2008, 25 National Institute of Child Health and
National Data Archive of Child Abuse Human Development
and Neglect (NDACAN), 28, (NICHD), 5, 7, 10, 96
30, 44, 66, 95–96 Study of Early Child Care And
National Educational Longitudinal Youth Development, 5, 7
Survey (NELS), 5, 6, 9, 11, National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
66–74 Data Resources Program, 25
application, 73 National Institutes of Health (NIH), 51
availability/accessibility, 73–74 National Longitudinal Study of
base-year survey, 68 Adolescent Health
dropout questionnaire, 68 (Add Health), 5, 6, 77–80
information, 68 application, 79–80
parent questionnaire, 68 availability/accessibility, 80
Quick Guide to Using the NELS, information, 79
68–70 waves, 78–79
school administrator National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS),
questionnaire, 68 7, 9, 14, 80–86
teacher questionnaire, 68 application, 85
National Evaluation of the National availability/accessibility, 81, 85–86
Institute of Justice Grants to Children and Young Adults of
Combat Violent Crimes NLSY79, 81, 82
Against Women on Campus Children of the NLSY79, 81, 83, 84
Program, 25 geocode data, 84
National Health and Nutrition geographic and environmental
Examination Survey data, 84
(NHANES), 74–77 health variables, 83–84
application, 76 information, 83–84
availability/accessibility, 76–77 NLS Mature and Young Women,
documentation for, 77 81, 82
Epidemiologic Follow-up Study NLS of Older Men, 7, 81–82
(NHEFS), 74, 75 NLS of Older Women, 7, 81–82
Hispanic HANES (HHANES), 75 NLS of Youth 97, 81, 82–83
information, 75–76 NLS Older and Young Men, 81–82
NHANES I, 74 NLS Youth of 79 (NLSY79), 81, 82
 Index 213

National Medical Care Expenditure National Survey of Child and

Survey (NMCES), 86–87 Adolescent Well-Being
Health Insurance/Employer (NSCAW; NSCAWB), 5, 7,
Survey, 86 93–96
Household Survey, 86 availability/accessibility, 95–96
Medical Provider Survey, 86–87 caregiver survey, 94
National Medical Care Utilization and caseworker survey, 94–95
Expenditure Survey general-use data, 95
(NMCUES), 86, 87 information, 95
Administrative Records local and state child welfare agency
Component, 87 survey, 94
National Household restricted-use data, 95
Component, 87 state survey, 94
State Medicaid Household teacher survey, 95
Component, 87 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting,
National Medical Expenditure Survey and Wildlife Associated
(NMES), 7, 86–89 Recreation, 24
application, 89 National Technical Information
availability/accessibility, 89 Service, 38
Household Survey, 87 New York City Housing and Vacancy
Institutionalized Population Survey, 24
Survey, 88 NLS Handbook, 81
Medical Expenditure Panel Survey
(MEPS), 86, 87, 88–89 oversampling, 10, 174
National Medical Care Expenditure
Survey (NMCES), 86–87 Panel Study of Income Dynamics
National Medical Care Utilization (PSID), 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11,
and Expenditure Survey 14–15, 98–105
(NMCUES), 86, 87 application, 98, 103–5
Survey of American Indians and attrition rates, 99
Alaskan Natives (SAIAN), 88 availability/accessibility, 98,
National Opinion Research Center 102–3, 105
(NORC), 52 Child Development Supplement
National Science Foundation, 10 (CDS) (see Child
National Survey of American Families Development Supplement
(NSAF), 5, 7, 89–93 (CDS))
application, 92–93 data collection sources, 101–2
area sampling, 91 family identification and mapping
availability/accessibility, 93 system (FIMS), 103
information, 92 fixed effects model, 103–4
random digit dialing, 91 information, 98
214 Index

Panel Study of Income Dynamics Public Use Microdata Sample

(PSID) (continued) (PUMS), 11, 12, 114–18,
supplements to, 102 131–32
Survey of Economic Opportunity American Community Survey,
(SEO), 98–99 114–15
Survey Research Center (SRC) at application, 116
the University of Michigan, availability/accessibility, 116–18
98, 99, 101, 103 Data Ferret, 116, 117
Pennsylvania State University, The information, 114–15, 116
Simple Online Data Archive for Integrated Public Use Microdata
Population Studies (SODA Series (IPUMS), 118
POP), 25, 38, 40 Public Use Microdata Areas
Personal Responsibility and Work (PUMAs), 115
Opportunity Reconciliation
Act of 1996, 127 random sampling, 10, 91, 96, 111, 174
population Research Triangle Institute (RTI), 98
-based data sets, 9–10 response rates, 26, 99, 174
and sampling, 18 results
primary data sets, 3–4, 15, 16, 174 generalization of, 20
Princeton University duration for getting, 22
Bendheim-Thomas Center for
Research on Child sample sizes, 16, 20
Wellbeing, 51 sampling weights, 10, 17, 175
probability samples, 10 SAS, 14, 15, 21–22, 29, 32–33, 48–49,
programming, 14–15, 21–22 55, 70, 103, 135, 141–44, 175
Project on Human Development in The MEANS Procedure, 34–35
Chicago Neighborhoods School Crime Supplement, 2007, 25
(PHDCN), 5, 6, 9, 11–12, 15, School Data Direct (SDD), 6, 118–22
110–14 application, 120
application, 113 availability/accessibility, 120–22
availability/accessibility, 113–14 data collection sources, 120
Community Survey, 110–11, 114 EDFacts, 120
hierarchical linear modeling information, 119–20
(HLM), 112–13 secondary data
Infant Assessment Unit, 111, 112 sets, 3–4, 175
Longitudinal Cohort Study, advantages of, 13–15
111–12 cost and quality, 13–14
National Archive of Criminal policy effects, examination of, 14
Justice Data, 113–14 sample sizes, 14
Systematic Social Observations software usage, 14–15
(SSO), 110, 111, 114 survey length, 14
 Index 215

appropriateness and feasibility of, stratified sampling, 115, 175

17–22 Study of Asset and Health Dynamics
dependent variables, 18 among the Oldest Old
population based data sets, 18 (AHEAD), 56, 58
independent variables, 19 Study of Early Child Care and Youth
study replication, 19–20 Development (SECCYD),
identifiers, 20 96–98
generalization of results, 20 application, 97–98
authorization of data sets, 20–21 availability/accessibility, 98
programming, 21–22 phases, 96–97
duration for getting results, 22 study replication, 19–20
cross-sectional, 12 Supplemental Children’s Survey, 37
defining, 9–12 Survey Documentation and Analysis
disadvantages of, 15–17 (SDA), 47–49, 93, 141
addition information, collection Survey for Income and Program
of, 16 Participation (SIPP), 11,
researcher control issues, 16–17 123–27
policy changes, current, 16 availability/accessibility, 127
sample sizes, 16 core content data, 124
wording of concepts, 15–16 Data Ferret, 125
longitudinal, 12 information, 123, 125–27
population-based, 9–10 panel and panel members, 123–24
research trend, 4 topical content data, 124–25
sibling studies, 85, 175 two-stage sampling design, 123
Small Area Health Insurance waves, 124
Estimates, 24 Survey Net, 37
Small Areas Income and Poverty Survey of Economic Opportunities
Estimates, 24 (SEO) sample, 10
Snapshots of America’s Families, 91 Survey of Income and Program
Social Security Administration, 56 Participation (SIPP), 6, 7, 9,
Social Security Administration Survey 11, 12, 127
of Income and Program Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD),
Participation, 24 7, 24, 127–30
Social Service Review (SSR), 4 1992–1993 wave, 128
Sociometrics, Inc., 141 1997 wave, 128
software. See programming 1998–2002 wave, 128
SPSS, 14, 15, 21–22, 29, 32, 40, 55, application, 129
103, 135, 175 availability/accessibility, 129–30
STATA, 14, 15, 21–22, 29, 40, 55, 103, CAPI questionnaire, 128
135, 175 Children’s Residential History
State Education Data Center, 119 Calendar, 128–29
216 Index

Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD) Urban Institute, The, 90, 91, 93

(continued) Welfare Rules Database, 91–92
information, 128–29 U.S. Census, and Welfare, Children,
sample attrition rates, 128 and Families: A Three City
Survey Research Center (SRC) Study, 6
sample, 10 U.S. Census Bureau, 24, 38, 129,
Systematic Social Observations (SSO), 131, 132
110, 111, 114 U.S. Census Form F-33, 120
U.S. Department of
Temporary Assistance for Needy Agriculture 35, 37
Families (TANF), 28–30, 90 U.S. Department of Commerce
time-series data sets, 14 Office of Economic
Transition to Adulthood Supplement, Opportunity, 10
105, 106 U.S. Department of Health and
Trauma Symptom Checklist for Human Services, 28, 63
Children (TSCC), 41 Administration for Children, Youth
Trauma Symptom Checklist for and Families, 65, 93
Young Children (TSCYC), 41 U.S. Department of Justice
2000 Census of Population and Office of Juvenile Justice and
Housing, 120 Delinquency Prevention, 41
U.S. Office for Human Research
United States Census, 11, 12, 131–36 Protections (OHRP), 51
American Fact Finder (AFF),
131–32 weighting, sampling, 10, 17, 175
availability/accessibility, 131–32 Welfare, Children and Families:
Census tract information, 132–36 A Three City Study, 5, 7,
data, 135 136–44
DVDs, 132–33 caseid, 144
legal and administrative embedded development study,
entities, 131 138, 141
SAS data, 132, 135 ethnography study, 138, 141
short and long forms, 131 information, 138–41
SPSS data, 135 longitudinal study, 137–38, 141
statistical entities, 131 neighborhood information, 138–39
United States Postal Service, 131 SAS data, 141–44
University of Michigan waves, 137–38
Survey Research Center, 56, 122 Woodcock-Johnson Revised Tests of
University of North Carolina, 59 Achievement, 107