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The Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) survey series is an ongoing, nationally representative, longitudinal study focusing especially on differences between Black and White Americans in middle and late life. These data constitute the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth waves in a panel survey covering a wide range of sociological, psychological, mental, and physical health items. Wave I of the study began in 1986 with a nation face-to-face survey of 3,617 adults ages 25 and up, with Black Americans and people aged 60 and over over-sampled at twice the rate of the others. Wave II constitutes face-to-face re-interviews in 1989 of those still alive. Survivors have been re-interviewed by telephone, and when necessary face-to-face, in 1994 (Wave III), 2001/02 (Wave IV), 2011 (Wave V), and 2019/21 (Wave VI).

Please note that for Wave VI, the majority of data collection occurred in 2019, with only a small subset (n=39) of participants surveyed in 2021.

ACL was designed and sought to investigate the following: (1) The ways in which a wide range of activities and social relationships that people engage in are broadly "productive," (2) how individuals adapt to acute life events and chronic stresses that threaten the maintenance of health, effective functioning, and productive activity, and (3) sociocultural variations in the nature, meaning, determinants, and consequences of productive activity and relationships. Among the topics covered are interpersonal relationships (spouse/partner, children, parents, friends), sources and levels of satisfaction, social interactions and leisure activities, traumatic life events (physical assault, serious illness, divorce, death of a loved one, financial or legal problems), perceptions of retirement, health behaviors (smoking, alcohol consumption, overweight, rest), and utilization of health care services (doctor visits, hospitalization, nursing home institutionalization, bed days). Also included are measures of physical health, psychological well-being, and indices referring to cognitive functioning.

Demographic information provided for individuals includes household composition, number of children and grandchildren, employment status, occupation and work history, income, family financial situation, religious beliefs and practices, ethnicity, race, education, sex, and region of residence.

The overall goal of the Baby's First Years study is to assess the causal role played by household income in affecting children's early cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development. Recent advances in developmental neuroscience suggest that experiences early in life have profound and enduring impacts on the developing brain. Family economic resources shape the nature of many of these experiences, yet the extent to which they affect children's development is unknown. The Baby's First Years project is the first randomized controlled trial to provide estimates of the causal impacts of unconditional cash gifts on the cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development of infants and young children in low-income U.S. families.

Specifically, 1,000 recruited mothers of infants with incomes below the federal poverty line from four diverse U.S. communities are receiving monthly cash gift payments by debit card. Mothers were initially told the gifts would last for the first 40 months of their child's life, but we have secured funding to continue the payments for three additional years (i.e., for a total of 76 months). Parents in the high cash gift group (n=400 in the study sample) are receiving a cash gift of $333 per month ($4,000 per year), while parents in the low cash gift group (n=600) are receiving a nominal monthly gift payment of $20 ($240 per year), also for 76 months.

In order to measure the impacts of the unconditional cash gift income on children's cognitive and behavioral development, we are assessing high and low cash gift group differences at ages 4, 6, and 8 (and, for a subset of measures, we capture interim development at ages 1, 2, and 3) in measures of cognitive, language, memory, self-regulation, and socio-emotional development. In order to understand the processes by which child impacts emerge, we are measuring a host of family process measures summarized in our pre-registration chart. Our data collection points are referred to as: "baseline", "age 1", "age 2," "age 3", "age 4", "age 6", and "age 8".

Additional information on the project, survey design, sample, variables, and COVID-19 pandemic adjustments are available from:

• The User Guides for Baseline, Age 1, Age 2, Age 3, and Age 4, which are included under the "Data and Documentation" tab
• The project's website: babysfirstyears.com

The researchers request that all peer-reviewed papers using BFY Data:

• be submitted to PubMed https://publicaccess.nih.gov immediately upon acceptance for publication
• include the following citation to the data in their bibliography:

Citation

Magnuson, Katherine A., Kimberly Noble, Greg J. Duncan, Nathan A. Fox, Lisa A. Gennetian, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Sarah Halpern-Meekin. Baby's First Years (BFY), New York City, New Orleans, Omaha, and Twin Cities, 2018-2023. ICPSR37871-v8. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], YYYY-MM-DD. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37871.v8

• and include the following in their acknowledgements:

Acknowledgement

This research uses data from the Baby's First Years study. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD087384 and 2R01HD087384. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. This research was additionally supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation; Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research-Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health; Andrew and Julie Klingenstein Family Fund; Annie E. Casey Foundation; Arnold Ventures; Arrow Impact; BCBS of Louisiana Foundation; Bezos Family Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Bill Hammack and Janice Parmelee, Brady Education Fund; Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Silicon Valley Community Foundation); Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies; Child Welfare Fund; Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund; Ford Foundation; Greater New Orleans Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; Holland Foundation; Jacobs Foundation; JPB Foundation; J-PAL North America; Lozier Foundation; New York City Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity; Perigee Fund; Robin Hood Foundation; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Russell Sage Foundation; Sherwood Foundation; Valhalla Foundation; Weitz Family Foundation; W.K. Kellogg Foundation; and three anonymous donors.

Principal Investigators

Katherine Magnuson, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison, lead PI social and behavioral science

Kimberly Noble, MD, PhD; Teachers College, Columbia University, lead PI neuroscience

In alphabetical order:

Greg Duncan, PhD; University of California, Irvine

Nathan A. Fox, PhD; University of Maryland

Lisa A. Gennetian, PhD; Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy

Hirokazu Yoshikawa, PhD; New York University

Principal Investigators of Qualitative Substudy

Sarah Halpern-Meekin, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Katherine Magnuson, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Study Management

Lauren Meyer, Teachers College, Columbia University; National Project Director

Andrea Karsh, University of California, Irvine; Administrative Director

Matthew Maury, Duke University, Production and Retention Management

Study Co-Investigators

Sarah Black, PhD; University of New Orleans

William Fifer, PhD; Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Columbia University Medical Center

Michael Georgieff, MD; University of Minnesota

Joseph Isler, PhD; Columbia University Medical Center

Debra Karhson, PhD; University of New Orleans

Alicia Kunin-Batson, PhD, University of Minnesota

Connie Lamm, PhD; University of Arkansas

Dennis Molfese, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Victoria Molfese, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Jennifer Mize Nelson, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Timothy Nelson, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Sonya Troller-Renfree, PhD; Teachers College, Columbia University

Study Data Collectors

The Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is responsible for recruitment and baseline, age-1, age-2, and age-3 data collection waves. Starting at age-4 through age-8, SRC is responsible for tracking families and assisting site-based staff in locating families. SRC data collection operations are overseen by: Stephanie Chardoul, Director of Survey Research Operations and Piotr Dworak, Senior Survey Specialist, Survey Research Operations.

Contact

To contact the study investigators, email them at [email protected]

Website: babysfirstyears.com

The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS, formerly known as the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study) follows a cohort of nearly 5,000 children born in large, U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. The study oversampled births to unmarried couples; and, when weighted, the data are representative of births in large U.S. cities at the turn of the century. The FFCWS was originally designed to address four questions of great interest to researchers and policy makers:

1. What are the conditions and capabilities of unmarried parents, especially fathers?
2. What is the nature of the relationships between unmarried parents?
3. How do children born into these families fare?
4. How do policies and environmental conditions affect families and children?

The FFCWS consists of interviews with mothers, fathers, and/or primary caregivers at birth and again when children are ages 1, 3, 5, 9, 15, and 22. The parent interviews collected information on attitudes, relationships, parenting behavior, demographic characteristics, health (mental and physical), economic and employment status, neighborhood characteristics, and program participation. Beginning at age 9, children were interviewed directly (either during the home visit or on the telephone). The direct child interviews collected data on family relationships, home routines, schools, peers, and physical and mental health, as well as health behaviors.

A collaborative study of the FFCWS, the In-Home Longitudinal Study of Pre-School Aged Children (In-Home Study) collected data from a subset of the FFCWS Core respondents at the Year 3 and 5 follow-ups to ask how parental resources in the form of parental presence or absence, time, and money influence children under the age of 5. The In-Home Study collected information on a variety of domains of the child's environment, including: the physical environment (quality of housing, nutrition and food security, health care, adequacy of clothing and supervision) and parenting (parental discipline, parental attachment, and cognitive stimulation). In addition, the In-Home Study also collected information on several important child outcomes, including anthropometrics, child behaviors, and cognitive ability. This information was collected through interviews with the child's primary caregiver, and direct observation of the child's home environment and the child's interactions with his or her caregiver.

Similar activities were conducted during the Year 9 follow-up. At the Year 15 follow-up, a condensed set of home visit activities were conducted with a subsample of approximately 1,000 teens. Teens who participated in the In-Home Study were also invited to participate in a Sleep Study and were asked to wear an accelerometer on their non-dominant wrist for seven consecutive days to track their sleep (Sleep Actigraphy Data) and that day's behaviors and mood (Daily Sleep Actigraphy and Diary Survey Data).

An additional collaborative study collected data from the child care provider (Year 3) and teacher (Years 9 and 15) through mail-based surveys. Saliva samples were collected at Year 9 and 15 (Biomarker file and Polygenic Scores). The Study of Adolescent Neural Development (SAND) COVID Study began data collection in May 2020 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It included online surveys with the young adult and their primary caregiver.

The FFCWS began its seventh wave of data collection in October 2020, around the focal child's 22nd birthday. Data collection and interviews continued through January 2024. The Year 22 wave included a young adult (YA) survey with the original focal child and a primary caregiver (PCG) survey. Data were also collected on the children of the original focal child (referred to as Generation 3, or G3).

In 2017, the FFCWS team announced the Fragile Families (FF) Challenge, a collaborative effort in which participants were tasked with using machine learning methods and FFCWS data (Baseline to Year 9) to build a model that would predict six key outcomes at Year 15. Materials used in the FF Challenge have been archived in this collection.

Documentation for these files is available on the FFCWS website under Data and Documentation. For details of updates made to the FFCWS data files, please see the project's Data Alerts page.

Data collection for the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421, as well as a consortium of private foundations.

Below is the citation for use of the FFCWS data accessed through ICPSR. For information on additional citation requirements when using FFCWS in publications, please refer to this FAQ on the FFCWS project site.

The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) is a periodic, ongoing longitudinal study of program performance. Successive nationally representative samples of Head Start children, their families, classrooms, and programs provide descriptive information on the population of children and families served; staff qualifications, credentials, and opinions; Head Start classroom practices and quality measures; and child and family outcomes. FACES includes a battery of child assessments across multiple developmental domains (cognitive, social, emotional, and physical).

For nearly a decade, the Office of Head Start, the Administration for Children and Families, other federal agencies, local programs, and the public have depended on FACES for valid and reliable national information on (1) the skills and abilities of Head Start children, (2) how Head Start children's skills and abilities compare with preschool children nationally, (3) Head Start children's readiness for and subsequent performance in kindergarten, and (4) the characteristics of the children's home and classroom environments. The FACES study is designed to enable researchers to answer a wide range of research questions that are crucial for aiding program managers and policymakers. Some of the questions that are central to FACES include:

1. What are the demographic characteristics of the population of children and families served by Head Start? How has the population served by Head Start changed?
2. What are the experiences of families and children in the Head Start program? How have they changed?
3. What are the cognitive and social skills of Head Start children at the beginning and end of their first year in the program? Has Head Start program performance improved over time?
4. Do the gains in cognitive and social skills that Head Start children achieve carry over into kindergarten? Do larger gains (or greater declines in problem behavior) translate into higher achievement at the end of kindergarten?
5. What are the qualifications of Head Start teachers in terms of education, experience, and credentials? Are average teacher education levels rising in Head Start?
6. What is the observed quality of Head Start classrooms as early learning environments, including the level and range of teaching and interactions, provisions for learning, emotional and instructional support, and classroom organization? How has quality changed over time? What program- and classroom-level factors are related to observed classroom quality? How is observed quality related to children's outcomes and developmental gains?

FACES also supports analyses of subgroups of interest, such as children with disabilities, dual language learners, and children who are performing above or below average on standardized assessments. Its design changes in response to emerging policy and research questions. For example, in response to the growing concern about childhood obesity, measures of children's height and weight were introduced in FACES 2006.

Measures for FACES 2006 were selected to balance the need to support comparisons to previous cohorts of FACES (particularly with respect to program performance measures) against the need to update the measurement battery and address emerging policy issues and benefits from progress in the assessment field. Many of the measures used in FACES 2006 were included in previous cohorts and they are presented below by the five major measurement sources in FACES: (1) child direct assessments; (2) parent interviews; (3) teacher interviews and survey; (4) classroom observations; and (5) program director, center director, and education coordinator interviews.

1. The child direct assessments included the major components of school readiness. They included a language screener, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition/Test de Vocabulario de Imagines Peabody, subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement Third Edition/Bateria III Woodcock-Munoz (letter word identification, applied problems, spelling, and word attack), a measure of early math literacy based on items from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth and Kindergarten Cohorts math assessments (geometry, patterns, and measurement), story and print concepts, and physical measurements (height and weight). At the end of the direct child assessment, interviewers rate the child's attention, organization/impulse control, activity level, and sociability using items from the Leiter-R scales.
2. The parent interview was designed to provide Head Start with a comprehensive understanding of the families that they serve, including the demographic characteristics of households and household members, parent-child relationships and the quality of the child's home life, and parent ratings of the child's behavior problems, social skills, and competencies, levels and types of participation in the program and in other community services.
3. The Head Start teacher interview was designed to collect information about classroom and teacher characteristics related to the quality of care provided by Head Start programs. Teachers were asked about their classroom activities and use of curricula, as well as their demographic and educational background and professional experience. They also used a Web survey to rate the social skills, problem behaviors, and competencies of each FACES child in their classroom. Kindergarten teachers provided information about schools attended by Head Start children, their classrooms and school experiences using a Web survey. They also completed ratings of each FACES child's social skills, behavior problems and competencies.
4. The classroom observations were designed to measure peer interactions and the extent to which Head Start programs employed skilled teachers and provided developmentally appropriate environments and curricula for their children. The measures used included the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R), the Arnett Scale of Lead Teacher Behavior, and the Instructional Support scale from the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Counts of children and adults were also taken to calculate group size and child-adult ratios.
5. The Program Director, Center Director, and Education Coordinator Interviews gathered information about staffing and recruitment, teacher education initiatives and training, waiting lists and program expansion, classroom activities, curriculum, overview of program management, and parent involvement.

The User Guide provides detailed information about the FACES 2006 study design, execution, and data to inform and assist researchers who may be interested in using the data for future analyses. The following items are provided in the User Guide as appendices.

• Appendix A -- Copyright Statements
• Appendix B -- Instrument Content Matrices
• Appendix C -- Questionnaires
• Appendix D -- Center/Program Codebook
• Appendix E -- Classroom/Teacher Codebook
• Appendix F -- Child Codebook
• Appendix G -- Description of Constructed/Derived Variables

The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) is a periodic, ongoing longitudinal study of program performance. Successive nationally representative samples of Head Start children, their families, classrooms, and programs provide descriptive information on the population of children and families served; staff qualifications, credentials, and opinions; Head Start classroom practices and quality measures; and child and family outcomes. FACES includes a battery of child assessments across multiple developmental domains (cognitive, social, emotional, and physical). FACES 2009 is the latest FACES cohort study and followed children from Head Start entry in fall 2009 through one or two years of program participation and to kindergarten.

For nearly a decade, the Office of Head Start, the Administration for Children and Families, other federal agencies, local programs, and the public have depended on FACES for valid and reliable national information on (1) the skills and abilities of Head Start children, (2) how Head Start children's skills and abilities compare with preschool children nationally, (3) Head Start children's readiness for and subsequent performance in kindergarten, and (4) the characteristics of the children's home and classroom environments. The FACES study is designed to enable researchers to answer a wide range of research questions that are crucial for aiding program managers and policymakers. Some of the questions that are central to FACES include:

1. What are the demographic characteristics of the population of children and families served by Head Start? How has the population served by Head Start changed?
2. What are the experiences of families and children in the Head Start program? How have they changed?
3. What are the cognitive and social skills of Head Start children at the beginning and end of their first year in the program? Has Head Start program performance improved over time?
4. Do the gains in cognitive and social skills that Head Start children achieve carry over into kindergarten? Do larger gains (or greater declines in problem behavior) translate into higher achievement at the end of kindergarten?
5. What are the qualifications of Head Start teachers in terms of education, experience, and credentials? Are average teacher education levels rising in Head Start?
6. What is the observed quality of Head Start classrooms as early learning environments, including the level and range of teaching and interactions, provisions for learning, emotional and instructional support, and classroom organization? How has quality changed over time? What program- and classroom-level factors are related to observed classroom quality? How is observed quality related to children's outcomes and developmental gains?

In response to recent trends and mandates, FACES 2009 expanded the information collected on families and children who speak a primary language other than English and the information collected on children who are homeless. Earlier cohorts of FACES gathered information on the languages spoken in the home and used for classroom instruction. Given the growth in the population of Hispanic/Latino preschoolers (Hernandez 2006), FACES 2009 placed additional emphasis on Dual Language Learners (DLLs). In addition, given the 2007 Head Start Act's focus on children and families who are homeless, FACES 2009 expanded coverage on the enrollment of such children, how the program ensures that they enroll in Head Start, and the special services available to such children and their families.

FACES 2009 carefully balanced the need for consistent measurement of outcomes against the need for improvements in instrumentation and techniques. In some instances, new instruments were added to obtain more comprehensive information on Head Start children. For example, the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test was added to assess children's expressive language, which is related to later reading achievement even more so than receptive language (National Early Literacy Panel 2008). A measure of phonemic awareness from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) preschool wave was also added to assess children's knowledge of beginning and ending sounds in words. Further, FACES 2009 included a direct assessment of executive functioning-a pencil tapping task to examine children's inhibitory control, working memory, and attention-which has been shown to relate to young children's development in mathematics, vocabulary, and literacy (Blair and Razza 2007; Espy et al. 2004; McClelland et al. 2007).

The User Guide provides detailed information about the FACES 2009 study design, execution, and data to inform and assist researchers who may be interested in using the data for future analyses. The following items are provided in the User Guide as appendices.

• Appendix A - Copyright statements
• Appendix B - Instrument Content Matrices
• Appendix C - Questionnaires
• Appendix D - Center/Program Codebook
• Appendix E - Classroom/Teacher Codebook
• Appendix F - Child Codebook
• Appendix G - Description of Constructed/Derived Variables

The 2007 Health Tracking Household Survey (HTHS) is the successor to the Community Tracking Study (CTS) Household Surveys which were conducted in 1996-1997 (ICPSR 2524), 1998-1999 (ICPSR 3199), 2000-2001 (ICPSR 3764), and 2003 (ICPSR 4216). Although the HTHS questionnaires are similar to the CTS Household Survey questionnaires, the HTHS sampling design does not have the community focus intrinsic to CTS. Whereas the CTS design focused on 60 nationally representative communities with sample sizes large enough to draw conclusions about health system change in 12 communities, the HTHS design is a national sample not aimed at measuring change within communities. Hence, "Community" was dropped from the study title. Like the CTS Household Surveys, HTHS collected information on health insurance coverage, use of health services, health expenses, satisfaction with health care and physician choice, unmet health care needs, usual source of care and patient trust, health status, adult chronic conditions, height and weight, and smoking behavior. In addition, the survey inquired about perceptions of care delivery and quality, problems with paying medical bills, use of in-store retail and onsite workplace health clinics, patient engagement with health care, sources of health information, and shopping for health care.

At the beginning of the interview, a household informant provided information about the composition of the household which was used to group the household members into family insurance units (FIU). Each FIU comprised an adult household member, his or her spouse or domestic partner (same sex and other unmarried partners), if any, and any dependent children 0-17 years of age or 18-22 years of age if a full-time student (even if living outside the household). In each FIU in the household, a FIU informant provided information on insurance coverage, health care use, usual source of care, and general health status of all FIU members. This informant also provided information on family income as well as employment, earnings, employer-offered insurance plans, and race/ethnicity for all adult FIU members. Moreover, every adult in each FIU (including the FIU informant) responded through a self-response module to questions that could not be answered reliably by proxy respondents, such as questions about unmet needs, assessments of the quality of care, consumer engagement, satisfaction with physician choice, use of health information, health care shopping, and detailed health questions. The FIU informants responded on behalf of children regarding unmet needs, satisfaction with physician choice, and use of health care information.

The Housing and Children's Healthy Development (HCHD) Study included four main aims:

1. to learn how parents make choices about where to live while negotiating tradeoffs between dwelling unit quality, neighborhood quality, and school quality;
2. to assess how features of the child's social contexts--home, neighborhood, and school--combine to influence key cognitive, socio-emotional, and health outcomes among parents and their children;
3. to examine how the quality of housing affects parenting practices and outcomes for children and their caregivers; and
4. to enhance the study of child development through theoretical and methodological advances in the study of housing and the other social contexts related to housing.

This collection includes data from Wave 2 of the HCHD Study. In Wave 2, telephone interviews were completed with 1,413 primary caregivers (PCGs) from the Wave 1 data collection. The PCGs also provided reports for 1,954 focal children who were still living in the household of the caregiver at the time of the Wave 2 survey. Wave 2 data collection included a coverscreen to gather updated location and contact information for the PCGs and children to determine household eligibility, and a PCG questionnaire based largely on the Wave 1 protocol with modifications for telephone interviewing.

This study includes public user data files of two waves of interviews with L.A.FANS respondents. There often are multiple respondents in L.A.FANS households and Wave 2 includes both panel respondents and a new sample. Users' Guides which explain the design and how to use the sample are available for Wave 1 and Wave 2 at the RAND website.

The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) is a two-wave study of adults and children in Los Angeles County and of the neighborhoods in which they live. The first wave (L.A.FANS-1), which was fielded between April 2000 and January 2002, interviewed adults and children living in 3,085 households in a stratified probability sample of 65 neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County. The samples of neighborhoods and individuals were representative of neighborhoods and residents of Los Angeles County. Poorer neighborhoods and households with children were oversampled. In Wave 2 of L.A.FANS (L.A.FANS-2), Wave 1 respondents living in Los Angeles County were reinterviewed and updated information was collected on Wave 1 respondents who had moved away from Los Angeles County. A sample of individuals who moved into each sampled neighborhood between Waves 1 and 2 was also interviewed, for a total of 2,319 adults and 1,382 children (ages less than 18 years). Additional information on the project is available at the RAND website.

Additional information on the project, survey design, sample, and variables are available from:

• Sastry, Narayan, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, John Adams, and Anne R. Pebley (2006). The Design of a Multilevel Survey of Children, Families, and Communities: The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, Social Science Research, Volume 35, Number 4, Pages 1000-1024
• The Users' Guides (Wave 1 and Wave 2)
• RAND Documentation Reports page

This study includes public user data files of two waves of interviews with L.A.FANS respondents. There often are multiple respondents in L.A.FANS households and Wave 2 includes both panel respondents and a new sample. Users' Guides which explain the design and how to use the sample are available for Wave 1 and Wave 2 at the RAND website.

The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) is a two-wave study of adults and children in Los Angeles County and of the neighborhoods in which they live. The first wave (L.A.FANS-1), which was fielded between April 2000 and January 2002, interviewed adults and children living in 3,085 households in a stratified probability sample of 65 neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County. The samples of neighborhoods and individuals were representative of neighborhoods and residents of Los Angeles County. Poorer neighborhoods and households with children were oversampled. In Wave 2 of L.A.FANS (L.A.FANS-2), Wave 1 respondents living in Los Angeles County were reinterviewed and updated information was collected on Wave 1 respondents who had moved away from Los Angeles County. A sample of individuals who moved into each sampled neighborhood between Waves 1 and 2 was also interviewed, for a total of 2,319 adults and 1,382 children (ages less than 18 years). Additional information on the project is available at the RAND website.

Additional information on the project, survey design, sample, and variables are available from:

• Sastry, Narayan, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, John Adams, and Anne R. Pebley (2006). The Design of a Multilevel Survey of Children, Families, and Communities: The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, Social Science Research, Volume 35, Number 4, Pages 1000-1024
• The Users' Guides (Wave 1 and Wave 2)
• RAND Documentation Reports page

This study includes one public use data file of follow-up interviews, conducted between 2011 and 2013, with respondents to Wave 2 of L.A.FANS (Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey). This follow-up data collection effort (hereafter called L.A.FANS-3 or Wave 3) was part of the broader Mixed Income Project (MIP), which was designed to allow for detailed examination of neighborhood context, residential mobility, and mixed-income housing in Los Angeles and Chicago. The two anchor studies for the MIP are L.A.FANS and the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN).

Wave 3 targeted a random probability sample of approximately 1,000 randomly selected adults and children from the prior wave of L.A.FANS, which was fielded between 2006 and 2008, who still resided within Los Angeles County. The Los Angeles field operation first assigned selected respondents to a telephone survey center for interviews. Cases that were not interviewed by telephone were transferred to experienced field interviewers in the Los Angeles area. The final response rate was 75 percent of eligible participants (i.e., residents who still resided in Los Angeles County and who were not institutionalized, incapacitated, or deceased) for a combined sample of 1,032. Two-hundred and two (202) of these respondents were reached during a preliminary Field Test in 2011, after which point the survey was slightly revised. After making these revisions, 830 respondents were reached during the Main Study. For more details on sampling procedures for the Field Test and Main Study, see Methodology section below.

For context, the L.A.FANS is a study of adults and children in Los Angeles County, and of the neighborhoods in which they live. The first wave (L.A.FANS-1 or Wave 1), which was fielded between April 2000 and January 2002, interviewed adults and children living in 3,085 households in a stratified probability sample of 65 neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County. The samples of neighborhoods and individuals were representative of neighborhoods and residents of Los Angeles County. Poorer neighborhoods and households with children were oversampled. In Wave 2 of L.A.FANS (L.A.FANS-2), Wave 1 respondents still living in Los Angeles County were re-interviewed, while updated information was collected on Wave 1 respondents who had moved away from Los Angeles County. A sample of individuals who moved into each sampled neighborhood between Waves 1 and 2 was also interviewed, for a total of 2,319 adults and 1,382 children (ages less than 18 years). Additional information on the project is available at the RAND website.

The Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary investigation of patterns, predictors, and consequences of midlife development in the areas of physical health, psychological well-being, and social responsibility. A description of the study and findings from it are available at http://www.midus.wisc.edu.

The first wave of the MIDUS study (MIDUS 1 or M1) collected survey data from a total of 7,108 participants. The baseline sample was comprised of individuals from four subsamples: (1) a national RDD (random digit dialing) sample (n=3,487); (2) oversamples from five metropolitan areas in the U.S. (n=757); (3) siblings of individuals from the RDD sample (n=950); and (4) a national RDD sample of twin pairs (n=1,914). All eligible participants were non-institutionalized, English-speaking adults in the coterminous United States, aged 25 to 74.

Data from the samples were collected primarily in 1995/96. The survey (Project 1) dataset contains responses from a 30-minute Phone interview and two 50-page Self-Administered Questionnaire (SAQ) instruments. Of the 7,108 respondents who completed the Phone interview, 6,325 also completed the SAQ.

This updated version of the study is comprised of three primary datasets:

Dataset 1, Main, Siblings, and Twin Data, contains responses from the main survey of 7,108 respondents. Respondents were asked to provide extensive information on their physical and mental health throughout their adult lives, and to assess the ways in which their lifestyles, including relationships and work-related demands, contributed to the conditions experienced. Those queried were asked to describe their histories of physical ailments, including heart-related conditions and cancer, as well as the treatment and/or lifestyle changes they went through as a result. A series of questions addressed alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use, and focused on history of use, regularity of use, attempts to quit, and how the use of those substances affected respondents' physical and mental well-being. Additional questions addressed respondents' sense of control over their health, their awareness of changes in their medical conditions, commitment to regular exercise and a healthy diet, experience with menopause, the decision-making process used to deal with health concerns, experiences with nontraditional remedies or therapies, and history of attending support groups. Respondents were asked to compare their overall well-being with that of their peers and to describe social, physical, and emotional characteristics typical of adults in their 20's, 40's, and 60's. Information on the work histories of respondents and their significant others was also elicited, with items covering the nature of their occupations, work-related physical and emotional demands, and how their personal health had correlated to their jobs. An additional series of questions focusing on childhood queried respondents regarding the presence/absence of their parents, religion, rules/punishments, love/affection, physical/verbal abuse, and the quality of their relationships with their parents and siblings. Respondents were also asked to consider their personal feelings of accomplishment, desire to learn, sense of control over their lives, interests, and hopes for the future.

The Datasets previously numbered 2 and 3 have been removed to avoid redundancies, and all datasets have been renumbered. Please refer to the readme file.

Dataset 2, Twin Screener Data, provides the first national sample of twin pairs ascertained randomly via the telephone.

Dataset 3, Coded Text Responses, describes how open-ended textual responses in the MIDUS 1 Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) and Self-Administered Questionnaire (SAQ) were transformed into categorical numeric codes. These codes are included in a stand-alone dataset containing only those cases (N=3,950) that contained text data in their responses.

Online Analysis Only: Datasets 1, 2, and 3 were merged together by the SU_ID variable to form "Merged Data with Weights (Online Analysis Only)" (Dataset 4) for online analysis capabilities.

MIDUS also maintains a Colectica portal, which allows users to interact with variables across waves and create customized subsets. Registration is required.

In 1995-1996, the MacArthur Midlife Research Network carried out a national survey of 7,108 Americans aged 25 to 74 (MIDLIFE IN THE UNITED STATES (MIDUS), 1995-1996 [ICPSR 2760]). The purpose of the study was to investigate the role of behavioral, psychological, and social factors in understanding age-related differences in physical and mental health. The study was innovative for its broad scientific scope, its diverse samples (which included twins and the siblings of main sample respondents), and its creative use of in-depth assessments in key areas (e.g., daily stress and cognitive functioning). A description of the study and findings from it are available at http://www.midus.wisc.edu. With support from the National Institute on Aging, a longitudinal follow-up of the original MIDUS samples: core sample (N = 3,487), metropolitan over-samples (N = 757), twins (N = 925 complete pairs), and siblings (N = 950), was conducted in 2004-2006. Guiding hypotheses for it, at the most general level, were that behavioral and psychosocial factors are consequential for physical and mental health. MIDUS 2 respondents were aged 35 to 86. Data collection largely repeated baseline assessments (e.g., phone interview and extensive self-administered questionnaire), with additional questions in selected areas (e.g., cognitive functioning, optimism and coping, stressful life events, and caregiving). To add refinements to MIDUS 2, an African American sample (N = 592) was recruited from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who participated in a personal interview and completed a questionnaire paralleling the above assessments. Survey data for the Milwaukee sample are available in a separate project [ICPSR 22840]. Also administered was a modified form of the mail questionnaire, via telephone, to respondents who did not complete a self-administered questionnaire.

In 1994/1995, the MacArthur Midlife Research Network carried out a national survey of over 7,000 Americans aged 25 to 74. The purpose of the study was to investigate the role of behavioral, psychological, and social factors in understanding age-related differences in physical and mental health. A description of the study and findings from it are available at the MIDUS website.

With support from the National Institute on Aging, a longitudinal follow-up of the original MIDUS samples (core sample (N = 3,487), metropolitan over-samples (N = 757), twins (N = 957 pairs), and siblings (N = 950)) was conducted in 2004-2006. Guiding hypotheses, at the most general level, were that behavioral and psychosocial factors are consequential for health (physical and mental). The purpose of the Cognitive Project was to determine how cognition is related to overall mental and physical health. Specific goals were: (1) to characterize the nature and range of midlife cognitive performance, relative to those younger and older, across multiple domains in a nationally representative sample (MIDUS); and (2) to examine the relationship between biopsychosocial factors (e.g., SES, health status, health-promoting behaviors, metabolic and cardiovascular biomarkers, depression, personality, control beliefs, stressful life events) and individual differences in cognitive functioning.

The development of a cognitive battery for the second wave of testing of the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) study provided an opportunity to examine the cognitive performance of young, middle-aged and older adults from a wide range of education levels in a large-scale, national sample. As part of the Cognitive Project of the MIDUS II the Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone (BTACT) (Lachman & Tun, 2008; Tun & Lachman, 2006) was administered. More information about the BTACT can be found at the Brandeis website. The BTACT represents the first comprehensive cognitive battery, including measures of speed and reaction time, to be administered by telephone to a national sample across the adult years and into later life. With a response rate of over 86 percent for the cognitive testing component of the MIDUS II, a cognitive data set of unprecedented range in terms of age, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), education, and geographic diversity was produced.

In 1995-1996, the MacArthur Midlife Research Network carried out a national survey of over 7,000 Americans aged 25 to 74 [ICPSR 2760]. The purpose of the study was to investigate the role of behavioral, psychological, and social factors in understanding age-related differences in physical and mental health. The study was innovative for its broad scientific scope, its diverse samples (which included siblings of the main sample respondents and a national sample of twin pairs), and its creative use of in-depth assessments in key areas (e.g. daily diary of stressful experiences [ICPSR 3725] and cognitive functioning [ICPSR 3596]) on a subset of participants. A detailed description of the study and findings generated by it are available at: http://www.midus.wisc.edu

With support from the National Institute on Aging, a follow-up of the original Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) sample was conducted in 2004 (MIDUS 2 [ICPSR 4652]). The daily stress and cognitive functioning projects were repeated and expanded at MIDUS 2; in addition the protocol was expanded to include biomarkers and neuroscience.

In 2013 a third wave (MIDUS 3) of survey data was collected on longitudinal participants. Data collection for this follow-up wave largely repeated baseline assessments (e.g., phone interview and extensive self-administered questionnaire), with additional questions in selected areas such as economic recession experiences. Cognitive functioning data were also collected at the same time, while data collection for the daily diary, biomarker, and neuroscience projects commenced in 2017.

MIDUS also maintains a Colectica portal, which allows users to interact with variables across waves and create customized subsets. Registration is required.

The National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) is the first population-based study of health and social factors on a national scale, aiming to understand the well-being of older, community-dwelling Americans by examining the interactions among physical health, illness, medication use, cognitive function, emotional health, sensory function, health behaviors, and social connectedness. It is designed to provide health providers, policy makers, and individuals with useful information and insights into these factors, particularly on social and intimate relationships. The National Opinion Research Center (NORC), along with Principal Investigators at the University of Chicago, conducted more than 3,000 interviews during 2005 and 2006 with a nationally representative sample of adults aged 57 to 85. Face-to-face interviews and biomeasure collection took place in respondents' homes. The following files constitute Round 1: Core Data, Marital/Cohabiting History Data, Social Networks Data, Medications Data, and Sexual Partners Data.

Included in the Core file (Datasets 1 and 2) are demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, education, race, and ethnicity. Other topics covered respondents' social networks, social and cultural activity, physical and mental health including cognition, well-being, illness, medications and alternative therapies, history of sexual and intimate partnerships and patient-physician communication, in addition to bereavement items. In addition data was collected from respondents on the following items and modules: social activity items, physical contact module, sexual interest module, get up and go assessment of physical function and a panel of biomeasures including, weight, waist circumference, height, blood pressure, smell, saliva collection, taste, and a self-administered vaginal swab for female respondents. The Core file also contains a count of the total number of drugs taken, and a variable for each observed therapeutic category, indicating whether the respondent reported taking one or more medications in that category. These variables are derived from the information in the medications file, and thus are guaranteed to be consistent with it. The Marital/Cohabiting History file (Dataset 3) contains one record for each marriage or cohabitation identified in Section 3A of the questionnaire. The Social Networks file (Datasets 4 and 5) contains one record for each person identified on the network roster. Respondents who refused to participate in the roster or who did not identify anyone are not represented in this file. The Medications file (Dataset 6) contains one record for each item listed in the medications log (including alternative medicines and nutritional products). Respondents who did not report taking any medications or who refused to participate in this module are not represented in this file. Lastly, the Sexual Partners file (Dataset 7) contains one record for each sexual partner identified in Section 3A of the questionnaire.

NACDA also maintains a Colectica portal with the NSHAP Core data across rounds 1-3, which allows users to interact with variables across rounds and create customized subsets. Registration is required.

The National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) is the first population-based study of health and social factors on a national scale, aiming to understand the well-being of older, community-dwelling Americans by examining the interactions among physical health, illness, medication use, cognitive function, emotional health, sensory function, health behaviors, and social connectedness. It is designed to provide health providers, policy makers, and individuals with useful information and insights into these factors, particularly on social and intimate relationships.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC), along with Principal Investigators at the University of Chicago, conducted more than 3,000 interviews during 2005 and 2006 with a nationally representative sample of adults aged 57 to 85. Face-to-face interviews and biomeasure collection took place in respondents' homes. Round 2 interviews were conducted from August 2010 through May 2011, during which Round 1 Respondents were re-interviewed. An attempt was also made to interview individuals who were sampled in Round 1 but declined to participate. In addition, spouses or co-resident partners were also interviewed using the same instruments as the main respondents. This process resulted in 3,377 total respondents. The following files constitute Round 2: Core Data, Disposition of Round 1 Partner Data, Social Networks Data, Social Networks Update Data, Partner History Data, Partner History Update Data, Medications Data, Proxy Data, and Sleep Statistics Data.

Included in the Core files (Datasets 1 and 2) are demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, education, race, and ethnicity. Other topics covered respondents' social networks, social and cultural activity, physical and mental health including cognition, well-being, illness, history of sexual and intimate partnerships, and patient-physician communication, in addition to bereavement items. Data were also collected from respondents on the following items and modules: social activity items, physical contact module, sexual interest module, get up and go assessment of physical function, and a panel of biomeasures, including weight, waist circumference, height, blood pressure, smell, saliva collection, and taste.

The Disposition of Round 1 Partner files (Datasets 3 and 4) detail information derived from Section 6A items regarding the partner from Round 1 within the questionnaire. This provides a complete history for respondent partners across both rounds.

The Social Networks files (Datasets 5 and 6) contain one record for each person identified on the network roster. Respondents who refused to participate in the roster or who did not identify anyone are not represented in this file.

The Social Networks Update files (Datasets 7 and 8) detail respondents' current relationship status with each person identified on the network roster.

The Partner History file (Dataset 9) contains one record for each marriage, cohabitation, or romantic relationship identified in Section 6A of the questionnaire, including a current partner in Round 2 but excluding the partner from Round 1.

The Partner History Update file (Dataset 10) details respondents' current sexual partner information, as well as marital and cohabiting status.

The Medications Data file (Dataset 11) contains records for items listed in the medications log.

The Proxy Data files (Datasets 12 and 13) contain information from proxy interviews administered for Round 1 Respondents who were either deceased or whose health was too poor to participate in Round 2.

The Sleep Statistics Data files (Dataset 14 and 15) provide information on actigraphy sleep variables.

NACDA also maintains a Colectica portal with the NSHAP Core data across rounds 1-3, which allows users to interact with variables across rounds and create customized subsets. Registration is required.

The National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) is a population-based study of health and social factors on a national scale, aiming to understand the well-being of older, community-dwelling Americans by examining the interactions among physical health, illness, medication use, cognitive function, emotional health, sensory function, health behaviors, and social connectedness. It is designed to provide health providers, policy makers, and individuals with useful information and insights into these factors, particularly on social and intimate relationships.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC), along with Principal Investigators at the University of Chicago, conducted more than 3,000 interviews during 2005 and 2006 with a nationally representative sample of adults aged 57 to 85. Face-to-face interviews and biomeasure collection took place in respondents' homes. Round 3 was conducted from September 2015 through November 2016, where 2,409 surviving Round 2 respondents were re-interviewed, and a New Cohort consisting of adults born between 1948 and 1965 together with their spouses or co-resident partners was added. All together, 4,777 respondents were interviewed in Round 3. The following files constitute Round 3: Core Data, Social Networks Data, Disposition of Returning Respondent Partner Data, and Proxy Data.

Included in the Core files (Datasets 1 and 2) are demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, education, race, and ethnicity. Other topics covered respondents' social networks, social and cultural activity, physical and mental health including cognition, well-being, illness, history of sexual and intimate partnerships and patient-physician communication, in addition to bereavement items. In addition data on a panel of biomeasures including, weight, waist circumference, height, and blood pressure was collected. The Social Networks (Datasets 3 and 4) files detail respondents' current relationship status with each person identified on the network roster. The Disposition of Returning Respondent Partner (Datasets 5 and 6) files detail information derived from Section 6A items regarding the partner from Rounds 1 and 2 within the questionnaire. This provides a complete history for respondent partners across both rounds. The Proxy (Datasets 7 and 8) files contain final health data for Round 1 and Round 2 respondents who could not participate in NSHAP due to disability or death.

The COVID-19 sub-study, administered to NSHAP R3 respondents in the Fall of 2020, was a brief self-report questionnaire that probed how the coronavirus pandemic changed older adults' lives. The COVID-19 sub-study questionnaire was limited to assessing specific domains in which respondents may have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, including: (1) COVID experiences, (2) health and health care, (3) job and finances, (4) social support, (5) marital status and relationship quality, (6) social activity and engagement, (7) living arrangements, (8) household composition and size, (9) mental health, (10) elder mistreatment, (11) health behaviors, and (12) positive impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Questions about engagement in racial justice issues since the death of George Floyd in police custody were also added to facilitate analysis of the independent and compounding effects of both the COVID-19 pandemic and reckoning with longstanding racial injustice in America.

The National Survey of Children's Health, funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), is a module of the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey (SLAITS) that is conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The survey was conducted to assess how well each state, and the nation as a whole, met MCHB's strategic plan goals and national performance measures. These goals include providing national leadership for maternal and child health, promoting an environment that supports maternal and child health, eliminating health barriers and disparities, improving the health infrastructure and systems of care, assuring quality care, working with states and communities to plan and implement policies and programs to improve the social, emotional, and physical environment, and acquiring the best available evidence to develop and promote guidelines and practices to assure a social, emotional, and physical environment that supports the health and well-being of women and children.

The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) was designed to produce national- and state-specific prevalence estimates for a variety of physical, emotional, and behavioral health indicators and measures of children's experiences with the health care system. Respondents were asked an extensive battery of questions about the family, including parental health, stress and coping behaviors, family activities, and parental concerns about their children, as well as their perceptions of the child's neighborhood.

Demographic information includes race, gender, family income, and education level.

The National Survey of Medical Decisions (the DECISIONS study) was a random-digit dial telephone survey of 3,010 adults over the age of 40 in the United States conducted between November 2006 and May 2007. Participants were asked a series of screening questions to identify which of ten common medical decisions they may have discussed with their health care providers in the previous two years and then completed two to three question modules regarding specific decisions that were relevant to each individual.

Funded by a grant from the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making (Boston, MA), the DECISIONS study is a unique data source which enables consideration of a wide variety of research questions related to when and how older adults manage the medical decisions they face. The initial screening module gathered highly generalizeable data regarding the prevalence of different types of common medical decisions in the experience of older Americans. The dynamically-administered modules then requested detailed information regarding how and when patients discuss key medical decisions with their health care providers, and whether variations in decision-making processes may have influenced patients' medical care.

This survey was conducted as part of the New Jersey Childhood Obesity Study, a project designed to provide vital information for planning, implementing, and evaluating interventions aimed at preventing childhood obesity in five New Jersey municipalities: Camden, Newark, New Brunswick, Trenton, and Vineland. Conducted among households with 3-18 year old children in the 5 cities, the survey interviewed the adult who made most of the decisions about food shopping in each household. The survey examined perceptions about food and physical activity environments in the five cities, investigated barriers related to access to healthy food and physical activity facilities, and collected information on the height and weight and food and physical activity behaviors of the cities' 3-18 year old children and the adult respondents. In addition, the survey collected demographic information about the household members.

Four linkable datasets contain the survey data: the Household File, Index Child File, Adult File, and All Child File. The Household File covers household and neighborhood characteristics, while the Index Child File describes the characteristics and behaviors of a randomly selected 3-18 year old child in the household, who is designated the "index child" and is the primary unit of analysis. The Adult File comprises characteristics and behaviors of the adult respondent, and, lastly, the All Child File covers a few characteristics of all children aged 3-18 in the household.

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of variations in early childcare histories on the psychological development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and their families, which took into account the complex interactions among child characteristics and those of the human and physical environments in which the children were reared.

The specific research aims were as follows:

• Examining the relationship between infants' childcare arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and stability of care and the age at which the child entered care) and children's concurrent and long-term development. Specifically, the study investigated the association between children's experiences in childcare and their social, emotional, language, and cognitive development. The social-emotional assessments included measures of attachment, independence, compliance, behavior problems, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and general competence in interacting with peers. Cognitive variables include general developmental level and problem solving skills. Language assessments incorporated measures of children's expressive and receptive communicative competence.

• Examining whether the social ecology of the home moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children from different home environments are differentially affected by similar childcare experiences. The study examined the moderating effects of parents' values and attitudes, psychological adjustment and mental health, stress and social support, child-rearing practices, time use, interactions with the child, the marital relationship, and family demographics.

• Examining whether individual differences among children moderate the effects of infant care on child development. The study examined the moderating effects of such child characteristics as age, sex, health, birth order, and temperament.

• Identify demographic and family characteristics associated with families' childcare decisions. The study examined whether specific childcare arrangements are related to the parents' social class, marital status, psychological adjustment and personality, child-rearing values and attitudes, parenting practices, stress, social support, marital relationship, and the availability of childcare in the community.

• Provide a natural history of infant care in the 1990s, and help establish a baseline of data pertaining to the kinds of care being used by families. Whereas other national databases, such as those provided by the United States Census Bureau, provide static estimates of the number of children in different types of childcare, this network study supplements that knowledge with longitudinal data on successive enrollments into day care at various ages, patterns of arrangements used concurrently and over time, and the stability of arrangements during the first three years of life. One of the most valuable aspects of the collaborative study is the opportunity it provides to obtain a more complete and accurate picture of patterns of infant care used by families today. Census surveys use only gross categories of care (e.g., center vs. in-home). In this study, more fine-grained information regarding the types of centers and home-care facilities was gathered.

• Examine the consequences for families of maternal employment and childcare choices. Family relationships, parental mental health, family stress, and so on, are not just inputs to child development or moderators of childcare effects, they are also outcomes. High-quality childcare may alleviate family stress and enhance parental adjustment. Low-quality childcare may add to the stress parents experience. Although the main focus in the study was on the effect of childcare on the child, the study also examined the effect of childcare on the family.

• Identify demographic characteristics of childcare associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality. These characteristics included the level and type of caregiver training, the size of the childcare group, the auspices of the childcare program (public/private, profit/nonprofit, independent/chain, employer-sponsored/church-based), whether the facility was licensed or unlicensed, the level of payment and fees, and whether the caregiver was a relative of the family.

309 data files were compiled for this study and are organized into 3 main groups:

1. Analytical Data Sets (ADS) -- The raw data were examined and composites defined by small groups of individual principal investigators according to the demographic, family, childcare, and child outcome content of the data. The psychometric and distributional qualities of the variables, along with site differences, were examined. A set of variables that were psychometrically and distributionally acceptable to be used in analytic analyses was designed to test the study hypotheses. These data files comprise Parts 1-42 of the study data material.

2. Supplemental Data Sets -- New and revised analysis variables as well as across-time mean scores and primary composites were produced as a supplement to the original Analytical Datasets. These data files comprise Parts 43-55 of the study data material.

3. Raw Data Sets -- The raw data were made available and comprise Parts 56-309 of the study data material.

A three-day summer training workshop on the SECCYD was put on by NICHD at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2010. The binder from that workshop, which includes the Powerpoint slides used during presentations, are freely available to the public as part of the study documentation.

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of variations in early childcare histories on the psychological development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and their families, which took into account the complex interactions among child characteristics and those of the human and physical environments in which the children were reared.

The specific research aims were as follows:

• Examining the relationship between infants' childcare arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and stability of care and the age at which the child entered care) and children's concurrent and long-term development. Specifically, the study investigated the association between children's experiences in childcare and their social, emotional, language, and cognitive development. The social-emotional assessments included measures of attachment, independence, compliance, behavior problems, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and general competence in interacting with peers. Cognitive variables include general developmental level and problem solving skills. Language assessments incorporated measures of children's expressive and receptive communicative competence.

• Examining whether the social ecology of the home moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children from different home environments are differentially affected by similar childcare experiences. The study examined the moderating effects of parents' values and attitudes, psychological adjustment and mental health, stress and social support, child-rearing practices, time use, interactions with the child, the marital relationship, and family demographics.

• Examining whether individual differences among children moderate the effects of infant care on child development. The study examined the moderating effects of such child characteristics as age, sex, health, birth order, and temperament.

• Identify demographic and family characteristics associated with families' childcare decisions. The study examined whether specific childcare arrangements are related to the parents' social class, marital status, psychological adjustment and personality, child-rearing values and attitudes, parenting practices, stress, social support, marital relationship, and the availability of childcare in the community.

• Provide a natural history of infant care in the 1990s, and help establish a baseline of data pertaining to the kinds of care being used by families. Whereas other national databases, such as those provided by the United States Census Bureau, provide static estimates of the number of children in different types of childcare, this network study supplements that knowledge with longitudinal data on successive enrollments into day care at various ages, patterns of arrangements used concurrently and over time, and the stability of arrangements during the first three years of life. One of the most valuable aspects of the collaborative study is the opportunity it provides to obtain a more complete and accurate picture of patterns of infant care used by families today. Census surveys use only gross categories of care (e.g., center vs. in-home). In this study, more fine-grained information regarding the types of centers and home-care facilities was gathered.

• Examine the consequences for families of maternal employment and childcare choices. Family relationships, parental mental health, family stress, and so on, are not just inputs to child development or moderators of childcare effects, they are also outcomes. High-quality childcare may alleviate family stress and enhance parental adjustment. Low-quality childcare may add to the stress parents experience. Although the main focus in the study was on the effect of childcare on the child, the study also examined the effect of childcare on the family.

• Identify demographic characteristics of childcare associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality. These characteristics included the level and type of caregiver training, the size of the childcare group, the auspices of the childcare program (public/private, profit/nonprofit, independent/chain, employer-sponsored/church-based), whether the facility was licensed or unlicensed, the level of payment and fees, and whether the caregiver was a relative of the family.

193 data files were compiled for this study and are organized into 3 main groups:

1. Analytical Data Sets (ADS) -- The raw data were examined and composites defined by small groups of individual principal investigators according to the demographic, family, childcare, and child outcome content of the data. The psychometric and distributional qualities of the variables along with site differences were examined. A set of variables that was psychometrically and distributionally acceptable to be used in analytic analyses was designed to test the study hypotheses. These data files comprise Parts 1-24 of the study data material.

2. Supplemental Data Sets -- New and revised analysis variables as well as across-time mean scores and primary composites were produced as a supplement to the original Analytical Data Sets. These data files comprise Parts 25-27 of the study data material.

3. Raw Data Sets -- The raw data were made available and comprise Parts 28-193 of the study data material.

A three-day summer training workshop on the SECCYD was put on by NICHD at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2010. The binder from that workshop, which includes the Powerpoint slides used during presentations, are freely available to the public as part of the study documentation.

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of variations in early childcare histories on the psychological development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and their families, which took into account the complex interactions among child characteristics and those of the human and physical environments in which the children were reared.

The specific research aims were as follows:

• Examining the relationship between infants' childcare arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and stability of care and the age at which the child entered care) and children's concurrent and long-term development. Specifically, the study investigated the association between children's experiences in childcare and their social, emotional, language, and cognitive development. The social-emotional assessments included measures of attachment, independence, compliance, behavior problems, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and general competence in interacting with peers. Cognitive variables include general developmental level and problem solving skills. Language assessments incorporated measures of children's expressive and receptive communicative competence.

• Examining whether the social ecology of the home moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children from different home environments are differentially affected by similar childcare experiences. The study examined the moderating effects of parents' values and attitudes, psychological adjustment and mental health, stress and social support, child-rearing practices, time use, interactions with the child, the marital relationship, and family demographics.

• Examining whether individual differences among children moderate the effects of infant care on child development. The study examined the moderating effects of such child characteristics as age, sex, health, birth order, and temperament.

• Identify demographic and family characteristics associated with families' childcare decisions. The study examined whether specific childcare arrangements are related to the parents' social class, marital status, psychological adjustment and personality, child-rearing values and attitudes, parenting practices, stress, social support, marital relationship, and the availability of childcare in the community.

• Provide a natural history of infant care in the 1990s, and help establish a baseline of data pertaining to the kinds of care being used by families. Whereas other national databases, such as those provided by the United States Census Bureau, provide static estimates of the number of children in different types of childcare, this network study supplements that knowledge with longitudinal data on successive enrollments into day care at various ages, patterns of arrangements used concurrently and over time, and the stability of arrangements during the first three years of life. One of the most valuable aspects of the collaborative study is the opportunity it provides to obtain a more complete and accurate picture of patterns of infant care used by families today. Census surveys use only gross categories of care (e.g., center vs. in-home). In this study, more fine-grained information regarding the types of centers and home-care facilities was gathered.

• Examine the consequences for families of maternal employment and childcare choices. Family relationships, parental mental health, family stress, and so on, are not just inputs to child development or moderators of childcare effects, they are also outcomes. High-quality childcare may alleviate family stress and enhance parental adjustment. Low-quality childcare may add to the stress parents experience. Although the main focus in the study was on the effect of childcare on the child, the study also examined the effect of childcare on the family.

• Identify demographic characteristics of childcare associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality. These characteristics included the level and type of caregiver training, the size of the childcare group, the auspices of the childcare program (public/private, profit/nonprofit, independent/chain, employer-sponsored/church-based), whether the facility was licensed or unlicensed, the level of payment and fees, and whether the caregiver was a relative of the family.

504 data files were compiled for this study and are organized into 4 main groups:

1. Analytical Data Sets (ADS) -- The raw data were examined and composites defined by small groups of individual principal investigators according to the demographic, family, childcare, and child outcome content of the data. The psychometric and distributional qualities of the variables along with site differences were examined. A set of variables that was psychometrically and distributionally acceptable to be used in analytic analyses was designed to test the study hypotheses. These data files comprise Parts 1-49 of the study data material.

2. Supplemental Data Sets -- New and revised analysis variables as well as across-time mean scores and primary composites were produced as a supplement to the original Analytical Data Sets. These data files comprise Parts 50-55 of the study data material.

3. Raw Census-Related Data Sets -- Files were produced using geocoded addresses for survey respondents to match block group level data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses for investigators to create additional measures of interest from the geocoded addresses. These data files comprise Parts 56-58 of the study data material.

4. Raw Data Sets -- The raw data were made available and comprise Parts 59-505 of the study data material.

A three-day summer training workshop on the SECCYD was put on by NICHD at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2010. The binder from that workshop, which includes the Powerpoint slides used during presentations, are freely available to the public as part of the study documentation.

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the influence of variations in early childcare histories on the psychological development of infants and toddlers from a variety of family backgrounds. This general objective was addressed through a prospective, longitudinal study of the experiences of 1,364 children and their families, which took into account the complex interactions among child characteristics and those of the human and physical environments in which the children were reared.

The specific research aims were as follows:

• Examining the relationship between infants' childcare arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and stability of care and the age at which the child entered care) and children's concurrent and long-term development. Specifically, the study investigated the association between children's experiences in childcare and their social, emotional, language, and cognitive development. The social-emotional assessments included measures of attachment, independence, compliance, behavior problems, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and general competence in interacting with peers. Cognitive variables include general developmental level and problem solving skills. Language assessments incorporated measures of children's expressive and receptive communicative competence.

• Examining whether the social ecology of the home moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children from different home environments are differentially affected by similar childcare experiences. The study examined the moderating effects of parents' values and attitudes, psychological adjustment and mental health, stress and social support, child-rearing practices, time use, interactions with the child, the marital relationship, and family demographics.

• Examining whether individual differences among children moderate the effects of infant care on child development. The study examined the moderating effects of such child characteristics as age, sex, health, birth order, and temperament.

• Identify demographic and family characteristics associated with families' childcare decisions. The study examined whether specific childcare arrangements are related to the parents' social class, marital status, psychological adjustment and personality, child-rearing values and attitudes, parenting practices, stress, social support, marital relationship, and the availability of childcare in the community.

• Provide a natural history of infant care in the 1990s, and help establish a baseline of data pertaining to the kinds of care being used by families. Whereas other national databases, such as those provided by the United States Census Bureau, provide static estimates of the number of children in different types of childcare, this network study supplements that knowledge with longitudinal data on successive enrollments into day care at various ages, patterns of arrangements used concurrently and over time, and the stability of arrangements during the first three years of life. One of the most valuable aspects of the collaborative study is the opportunity it provides to obtain a more complete and accurate picture of patterns of infant care used by families today. Census surveys use only gross categories of care (e.g., center vs. in-home). In this study, more fine-grained information regarding the types of centers and home-care facilities was gathered.

• Examine the consequences for families of maternal employment and childcare choices. Family relationships, parental mental health, family stress, and so on, are not just inputs to child development or moderators of childcare effects, they are also outcomes. High-quality childcare may alleviate family stress and enhance parental adjustment. Low-quality childcare may add to the stress parents experience. Although the main focus in the study was on the effect of childcare on the child, the study also examined the effect of childcare on the family.

• Identify demographic characteristics of childcare associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality. These characteristics included the level and type of caregiver training, the size of the childcare group, the auspices of the childcare program (public/private, profit/nonprofit, independent/chain, employer-sponsored/church-based), whether the facility was licensed or unlicensed, the level of payment and fees, and whether the caregiver was a relative of the family.

158 data files were compiled for this study and are organized into 4 main groups:

1. Analytical Data Sets (ADS)-- The raw data were examined and composites defined by small groups of individual principal investigators according to the demographic, family, childcare, and child outcome content of the data. The psychometric and distributional qualities of the variables along with site differences were examined. A set of variables that was psychometrically and distributionally acceptable to be used in analytic analyses was designed to test the study hypotheses. These data files comprise Parts 1-19 of the study data material.

2. Supplemental Data Sets -- New and revised analysis variables as well as across-time mean scores and primary composites were produced as supplements to the original Analytical Data Sets. These data files are Parts 20-26 of the study data material.

3. Raw Census-Related Data Sets -- Files were produced using geocoded addresses for survey respondents to match block group-level data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses for investigators to create additional measures of interest from the geocoded addresses. These data files comprise Parts 27-30 of the study data material.

4. Raw Data Sets -- The raw data were made available and comprise Parts 31-158 of the study data material.

Included in this phase of the study are the output of several third-party software programs that were used during Phases II, III and IV to collect data for specific tasks or activities. These programs produced one output data file per subject, which were combined to produce some of the raw data files for those studies. The original program output is included as expanded documentation in this phase of the study.

A three-day summer training workshop on the SECCYD was put on by NICHD at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2010. The binder from that workshop, which includes the Powerpoint slides used during presentations, are freely available to the public as part of the study documentation.

This catalog record includes detailed variable-level descriptions, enabling data discovery and comparison. The data are not archived at ICPSR. Users should consult the data owners (via PSID) directly for details on obtaining the data.

The PSID is the world's longest-running nationally representative household panel survey. With over 50 years of data on the same families and their descendants, the PSID is a cornerstone of the data infrastructure for empirically based social science research in the U.S. PSID gathers data on the family as a whole and on individuals residing within the family, emphasizing the dynamic and interactive aspects of family economics, demography, and health. PSID data were collected annually from 1968-1997 and biennially after 1997. In the Main Interview, one person per family is interviewed on a regular basis. Information about each family member is collected, but much greater detail is obtained about the reference person and, if married/cohabitating, the spouse or long-term cohabitor. Survey content changes to reflect evolving scientific and policy priorities, although many content areas have been consistently measured since 1968. Information includes employment, income, wealth, expenditures, health, education, marriage, childbearing, philanthropy, and numerous other topics. With low attrition and high success in following young adults as they form their own families, the sample size has grown from roughly 5,000 families in 1968 to more than 10,000 families and 24,000 individuals by 2017. Over the course of the study, the PSID has distributed data on more than 80,000 individuals. The long panel, genealogical design, and broad content of the data offer unique opportunities to conduct generational and life-course research. The PSID now contains thousands of inter- and intragenerational relationships over 50 years of data, including:

• "Paired" generational relationships, with each family in the pair providing independent interviews (as of the 2017 wave)
• Parent-Adult Child pairs: ~5,500
• Sibling pairs: ~3,600
• Cousin pairs: ~4,500
• "Tripled" generational relationships, with all three generations providing independent interviews (as of the 2017 wave)
• • Grandparent-Parent-Adult Child triplets: ~1,400

The PSID is the world's longest-running nationally representative household panel survey. With over 50 years of data on the same families and their descendants, the PSID is a cornerstone of the data infrastructure for empirically based social science research in the U.S. PSID gathers data on the family as a whole and on individuals residing within the family, emphasizing the dynamic and interactive aspects of family economics, demography, and health. PSID data were collected annually from 1968-1997 and biennially after 1997.

In the Main Interview, one person per family is interviewed on a regular basis. Information about each family member is collected, but much greater detail is obtained about the reference person and, if married/cohabitating, the spouse or long-term cohabitor. Survey content changes to reflect evolving scientific and policy priorities, although many content areas have been consistently measured since 1968. Information includes employment, income, wealth, expenditures, time use, health, dementia screener, insurance, education, marriage, childbearing, philanthropy, and numerous other topics. Additional types of PSID data are available only under a restricted contract. These include but are not limited to: geospatial data below the level of state; mortality data; Medicare claims; and educational characteristics from the National Center for Education Statistics.

With low attrition and high success in following young adults as they form their own families, the sample size has grown from roughly 5,000 families in 1968 to more than 9,000 families and 24,000 individuals by 2021. Over the course of the study, the PSID has distributed data on more than 84,000 individuals. The long panel, genealogical design, and broad content of the data offer unique opportunities to conduct generational and life-course research.

The PSID now contains thousands of inter- and intragenerational relationships over 50 years of data, including (as of the 2021 wave):

• "Paired" generational relationships, with each family in the pair providing independent interviews
  • Parent-Adult Child pairs: ~4,300
  • Sibling pairs: ~5,200
  • Cousin pairs: ~5,400
• "Tripled" generational relationships, with all three generations providing independent interviews
  • Grandparent-Parent-Adult Child triplets: ~1,000

For information about earlier data collections, see Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): Main Interview, 1968-2015.

In 2021, the main interview was updated to include questions about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including: loss of earnings, US government stimulus payments, charitable giving, participants' exposure to COVID-19, and vaccination status.

This syntax harmonizes four nationally representative time-use datasets from the United States (2003), the United Kingdom (2000-2001), Germany (2001-2002) and Norway (2001). The dataset was created to examine parental time with children. It seeks to remedy several limitations of the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS) datasets, circa 2006, for studying parents' time with children. Specifically, it improves upon data available by utilizing information about who else was present when each activity took place, using more detailed time-use codes, and retaining a wider variety of background variables.

The sample specified in the syntax is restricted to partnered respondents (married or cohabiting) who reside with children aged 14 years or under. Households with children aged 15 years and over and households containing other adults are not included to ensure comparability in the coding of who the respondent was with during each activity. Researchers wishing to use other inclusion criteria can simply alter the syntax provided.

To construct the dataset researchers must obtain the original, publicly-available data from each country directly (described in the User Guide) and then run the syntax available through the ICPSR Web site. Each dataset contains many more variables than we attempted or were able to harmonize. Documentation for each original dataset should be consulted for the availability of additional variables.

The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a long-term study of a random sample of 10,317 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. The WLS provides an opportunity to study the life course, intergenerational transfers and relationships, family functioning, physical and mental health and well-being, and morbidity and mortality from late adolescence through 2025. WLS data also cover social background, youthful aspirations, schooling, military service, labor market experiences, family characteristics and events, social participation, psychological characteristics and retirement.

Survey data were collected from the original respondents (the graduates) in 1957, 1964, 1975, 1992, 2004, 2011, 2020 and 2022; from their parents in 1957 and 1964; from a selected sibling in 1977, 1994, 2005, 2011, 2020 and 2022; from the spouse of the original respondent in 2004; and from the spouse of the selected sibling in 2006.

The collection of cognitive function data among graduates and siblings under the ILIAD study (MPIS: Sanjay Asthana, Michal Engelman, and Pamela Herd) began in 2020 to measure risk and resilience of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD) as the cohort reaches their 80s. Data from 2020 and 2022 have been released, and 2025 and 2027 wave releases are forthcoming.

The WLS also has extensive administrative linkages, including with the 1940 and 1950 census, Social Security records, voting participation, and Medicare claims data.