Summary: | The National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH)
series was designed and carried out at the Center for Demography and
Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the direction
of Larry Bumpass and James Sweet with the aim of providing improved
understanding of both the structure and functioning of American families
in order to overcome the limitations of previously available data on
family structure, family process, and family relationships. The fieldwork
was done by the Institute for Survey Research at Temple University, and
William Aquilino of the Institute for Social Research, University of
Michigan, provided technical support and assisted in the development
of the questionnaires, management of the field operations, and
coordination of the data preparation. The series was developed with funds
by a grant from the Center for Population Research of the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The series is a national
longitudinal survey that permits research on a wide variety of aspects of
American family life and experience as both determinants and consequences
of other family and life course events. A considerable amount of
life-history information was collected, including childhood living
arrangements, family composition, and relationships, as well as education,
fertility, and employment histories. Individuals, rather than families
or households, form the units of observation. The design is
cross-sectional, with several retrospective sequences, permitting the
detailed description of past and current living arrangements and other
characteristics and experiences, as well as the analysis of the
consequences of earlier patterns on current states, marital and
parenting relationships, kin contact, and economic and psychological
well-being. Users of the NSFH data should check for periodic updates
of the collection by consulting files maintained by the principal
investigators at the University of Wisconsin. These files may
be accessed via anonymous FTP at: elaine.ssc.wisc.edu (cd /pub/nsfh).
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