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The National Long-Term Care Survey (NLTCS) has completed six waves, nominally at five-year intervals, 1982, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, and 2004. The NLTCS is a nationally-representative sample both of the community and of institutionalized populations and is longitudinal in that sample persons join the survey once they reach 65 years of age and stay in the survey until they either die or are lost to follow-up. At each wave, a screener questionnaire is administered to the sample which divides the sample into three parts: the non-disabled (frequently called screen-outs), the disabled but living in the community, and the disabled living in an institution. About 5,000 people die between waves and are replaced by a sample of about that size of people who have become age 65 since the prior wave. Because of budget considerations it usually has not been possible to continue the entire non-disabled sample into the next wave. Instead a sample of the non-disabled is drawn to keep the total sample size for a wave at about 20,000. One of the interesting and useful features of the NLTCS is that data are collected on help that the sample person receives from informal caregivers.

The NLTCS is a very data-rich resource with many components, including disability measures, medical conditions, attained education levels, and income. Numerous papers have used it as a source of data addressing a wide variety of topics related to aging and disability.

Ancillary surveys have been added to measure other characteristics of the 65 and older population, to include a Caregiver Survey to acquire data on informal caregivers themselves (done in 1989, 1999, and 2004) and Next-of-Kin (NOK) surveys administered to sample persons who had died between 1982 and 1984 and again between 1994 and 1999. The sample has been frequently supplemented to compensate for low representation in some survey components, in particular the 75 years and older and 95 years and older components. In 1999 physical specimens were drawn from a sample of persons who responded to the survey. These physical specimens (blood where possible, alternatively a buccal wash) are subject to a genetic analysis and, in the case of blood, to a panel of proteins believed to be particularly important to health.

NLTCS Survey Data

Survey data are available in ASCII and SAS format.

The Analytic Data File, a file of derived variables for all waves of the survey incorporates correction factors and consistency checking. The Analytic Data File covers all waves of the survey and is available in both ASCII and SAS formats. Final versions of data for all waves, up to and including 1999 and a beta version for 2004, have been released and are supported by documentation.

The New Immigrant Survey (NIS) was a nationally representative, longitudinal study of new legal immigrants to the United States and their children. The sampling frame was based on the electronic administrative records compiled for new legal permanent residents (LPRs) by the U.S. government (via, formerly, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and now its successor agencies, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS)). The sample was drawn from new legal immigrants during May through November of 2003. The geographic sampling design took advantage of the natural clustering of immigrants. It included all top 85 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and all top 38 counties, plus a random sample of MSAs and counties. The baseline survey was conducted from June 2003 to June 2004 and yielded data on:

• 8,573 Adult Sample respondents,
• 810 sponsor-parents of the Sampled Child,
• 4,915 spouses,
• and 1,072 children aged 8-12.

Interviews were conducted in the respondents' language of choice. The Round 1 questionnaire items that were used in social-demographic-migration surveys around the world as well as the major U.S. longitudinal surveys were reviewed in order to achieve comparability. The NIS content includes the following information: demographic, health and insurance, migration history, living conditions, transfers, employment history, income, assets, social networks, religion, housing environment, and child assessment tests.

The New Immigrant Survey (NIS) is a nationally representative, multi-cohort, longitudinal study of new legal immigrants to the United States and their children. The sampling frame is based on the electronic administrative records compiled for new legal permanent residents (LPRs) by the U.S. government (via, formerly, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and now its successor agencies, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS)). The geographic sampling design takes advantage of the natural clustering of immigrants. It includes all top 85 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and all top 38 counties, plus a random sample of MSAs and counties. The baseline survey (ICPSR 38031) was conducted from June 2003 to June 2004 and yielded data on:

• 8,573 Adult Sample respondents
• 810 sponsor-parent of the Sampled Child
• 4,915 spouses
• and 1,072 children aged 8-12.

Interviews were conducted in the respondents' language of choice. Round 2 instruments were designed to track changes from the baseline and also included new questions. As with the Round 1 questionnaire, questions that were used in social-demographic-migration surveys around the world as well as the major U.S. longitudinal surveys were reviewed in order to achieve comparability.

The New Immigrant Survey (NIS) was a nationally representative, longitudinal study of new legal immigrants to the United States and their children. The sampling frame was based on the electronic administrative records compiled for new legal permanent residents (LPRs) by the U.S. government (via, formerly, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and now its successor agencies, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS)). The sample was drawn from new legal immigrants during May through November of 2003. The geographic sampling design took advantage of the natural clustering of immigrants. It included all top 85 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and all top 38 counties, plus a random sample of MSAs and counties. The baseline survey (ICPSR 38031) was conducted from June 2003 to June 2004 and yielded data on:

• 8,573 Adult Sample respondents,
• 810 sponsor-parents of the Sampled Child,
• 4,915 spouses,
• and 1,072 children aged 8-12.

This study contains the follow-up interview, conducted from June 2007 to October 2009, and yielded data on:

• 3,902 Adult Sample respondents,
• 351 sponsor-parents of the Sampled Child,
• 1,771 spouses,
• and 41 now-adult main children.

Interviews were conducted in the respondents' language of choice. Round 2 instruments were designed to track changes from the baseline and also included new questions. As with the Round 1 questionnaire, questions that were used in social-demographic-migration surveys around the world as well as the major U.S. longitudinal surveys were reviewed in order to achieve comparability. The NIS content includes the following information: demographics, health and insurance, migration history, living conditions, transfers, employment history, income, assets, social networks, religion, housing environment, and child assessment tests.

The New Immigrant Survey (NIS) was a nationally representative, longitudinal study of new legal immigrants to the United States and their children. The sampling frame was based on the electronic administrative records compiled for new legal permanent residents (LPRs) by the U.S. government (via, formerly, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and now its successor agencies, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS)). The sample was drawn from new legal immigrants during May through November of 2003. The geographic sampling design took advantage of the natural clustering of immigrants. It included all top 85 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and all top 38 counties, plus a random sample of MSAs and counties. The baseline survey (ICPSR 38031) was conducted from June 2003 to June 2004 and yielded data on:

• 8,573 Adult Sample respondents,
• 810 sponsor-parents of the Sampled Child,
• 4,915 spouses,
• and 1,072 children aged 8-12.