Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS): Parent Module
QUESTION: I’m using the parenting style variables from the parent-child module (e.g., ph1-ph10_s) and I’m wondering what the rationale was behind categorizing the age groups as 1-2, 3-5, 6-9 and 10-15?
RESPONSE:
These are variables that come from the HOME scale and were modified by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and one of her post-docs for use in LAFANS. The point of asking slightly different questions at different ages is that, given that children change with age, some questions only become appropriate at some ages. For example, you can imagine a parent “putting” a child in his/her room as punishment for a young child, but “sending” an older child to his/her room. Other examples include discussing TV programs with children — probably something parents would do more with older than younger kids.
Many of the measures are identical across age groups, but not all.
QUESTION: In the parent questionnaire there is a CAPI check (PF1) that determines if the child falls into three age groups (3 or younger, 4-6, 7+). This then determines if the PCG was asked questions about the child’s schooling. I have found quite a few cases (more than 10) where the child is coded as being in the first category (3 years or younger) and therefore is not asked any of the schooling questions even though their age (RSC_AGE or SIB_AGE) indicates that they should have fallen in the 7+ years category. Has this been identified as a problem already?
RESPONSE:
The age variable used by CAPI in the Parent module to determine skips was PAGE, the age of the child based on the reported birthdate, and not RSC_AGE/SIB_AGE which are from the roster. As you know the age in the roster might differ because the roster respondent is not the child’s PCG and does not know the exact age or because the roster respondent rounded the age.
PF1 and PAGE are in agreement.
If PAGE was missing (PAGE=.) because no birthdate was reported, then the CAPI code treated PAGE as being “less than 4” and put them in the PF1 category. The CAPI code unfortunately did not pull in the age from the roster to use if birthdate was not collected. So, you’ll have some kids with PF1=1 who have a roster age in RSC_AGE or SIB_AGE (these were variables added by us to the Parent file just before the data was released) that is greater than 3.
There were minor problems with CAPI check variables using missing values when codes were generated by CAPI. The code did not always adequately account for such instances. Also, ex post, some variables originally used by the CAPI program were revised later after fieldwork, and the CAPI check variables using them were not always adjusted for those changes.
Thus, one should always be aware that CAPI check variables especially may have some inconsistencies.
QUESTION: In the PCG data, is there any variable that, if the PCG is the adoptive OR biological parent, indicates whether the PCG is adoptive or biological?
RESPONSE:
If you look at the PARENT module data (which as one record for the RSC and one for the SIB if present), you’ll see there is a variable on that file called PGPNOPAR that equals 0 if the PCG is the bio/adopt parent of the given child in the Parent module and equals 1 if the PGP is not the bio/adopt parent.
Also, if you look at the roster, you’ll see that for children in the roster (including the RSC and SIB), the variables RA21ID and RA25ID contain the person id of the bio/adoptive parent of children. If the person id of the PCG equals RA21ID or RA25ID then the PCG is the bio/adoptive parent.
It pays to review the entire LAFANS set of modules since information of interest may be found in numerous places and not always in the module you’re presently looking at.
QUESTION: Regarding the skip pattern for some of the questions on the parent questionnaire, if the RSC was between the ages of 1-15 it appears that questions ph3-ph71a where not asked in reference to the SIB. Is this correct? And from what I read in the codebook, the reasoning behind this was that the answers to these questions would be the same for both children, so they were only asked in reference to the RSC?
RESPONSE:
The idea was to ask these questions only once per family — i.e., we did not have the time nor did we want the respondents to have the burden of answering these questions twice if there were two children in the household. As the codebook says, these questions are part of the “HOME Inventory” designed to measure the home environment. To reduce respondent burden, we decided that measures of this environment for one child could be used as proxies for the home environment in general.
However, the questions were originally designed only for children ages 1 to 15. The effect of the skips in H1 and H2 is that if the RSC is 1 to 15, the questions get asked for the RSC. Remember that the PCG completes the Parent Qx for the RSC first. Then if these questions were not completed for the RSC, there is a SIB, and the SIB is 1 to 15 years old, the questions are completed for the SIB. Since the RSC is selected randomly this means that these questions are essentially asked for one randomly selected child per household.
QUESTION: For the variables PC7 and PC11 it looks like information was collected on other residential locations where children lived if they didn’t live with their parents (the PCG) for the 2 yrs prior to interview, but it looks like these locations were not geocoded and assigned census tracts. Is this correct? I use the locations to assign air monitors so I just want to make sure these are ones that I will not be able to assign exposures to.
RESPONSE:
PC7 and PC11 were inadvertently missed in geocoding addresses. However, there were only 12 PC7 addresses where geocoding could have been attempted (out of 52) and only 3 PC11 addresses (of out 12) because we were only geocoding LA area addresses and we needed a valid street address. Thus the decision was to not go back and try to geocode those few once we discovered the omission.
QUESTION: In the day care data, it looks like the 3rd non-relative provider and 3rd day care center provider locations did not get geocoded. Is this because there were no subjects with more than 2 non-relative providers or day care center providers or were the data just not mapped for this?
RESPONSE:
There were no third non-relative providers or third daycare center providers to geocode.