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The 500 Family Study was designed to obtain in-depth information on middle class, dual-career families living in the United States. To understand the complex dynamics of today's families and the strategies they use to balance the demands of work and family, over 500 families from 8 cities across the United States were studied. To address different issues facing parents with older and younger children, families with adolescents and families with kindergartners were included in the sample. Working mothers and fathers are now splitting their time between their responsibilities to their family, and to their respective occupations. This study of 500 families explores how work affects the lives and well-being of parents and their children.

The study's data allows researchers to explore a broad range of questions:

• How do dual-career families manage and organize their resources and time between family and work?
• How do work conditions, including characteristics of the job and workplace environment, affect the quality of relationships among household members?
• How do dual career parents manage the moral and social development and learning experiences of their children?
• How do the work-related responsibilities of working parents affect their child's moral, social, and educational development?
• What effect is consumerism and technology having on how working families direct the moral and social development of their children?
• What do parents believe is their role regarding the child-care of their children and how they should fulfill that role both in terms of time and in the allocation of economic and social resources? What are some of the resources in the community that parents use to supervise their children?
• How do families regard the "free time" of adolescents and how they allocate adolescent "free time" in maintenance of the household?
• What is the quality of relationships among family members?

To obtain a detailed picture of work and family life, mothers, fathers, and their children were asked to complete a series of instruments including surveys, in-depth interviews, and time diaries. These instruments were designed to provide information about work, marriage, child care and parental supervision, management of household tasks, time allocations, coping strategies, and psychological well-being.

The four datasets associated with this data collection are summarized below:

1. The Cortisol Data contains information for a subsample of families that elected to participate in a study of psychological stress. Parents and teenagers who agreed to participate completed an additional two days of ESM data collection. The health survey that was administered reported on a variety of health and lifestyle issues that might affect cortisol (stress hormone) levels such as medication use, consumption of caffeine and alcohol, use of nicotine, timing of menstrual cycle, pregnancy, presence of chronic illness, and respondent's height and weight. Additionally, parents reported on the health of the children (teenagers and kindergartners) participating in the study.
2. The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) Data contains a variety of information related to how individuals spend their time, who they spent it with, and what activities they were engaged in over the course of a typical week. Respondents wore programmed wrist watches that emitted signals (beeps) throughout the day. When possible, family members were placed on identical signaling schedules to provide information on a range of family activities. At the time of each beep, participants were asked to complete a self-report form which asked them to answer a number of open-ended questions about their location, activities, who they were with, and psychological states. Several Likert and semantic-differential scales were used to assess participants' psychological states.
3. The Parent Data contains basic demographic information from respondents as well as detailed information about parents' occupation job duties, income, work schedule, benefits (e.g., medical care, flexible work schedules, and family leave), and the consequences of their jobs (e.g. long hours, job stress, having to work weekends). Additionally, the data contain information about the extent to which parents experienced work-family conflict and what changes might help with better balance of the demands of work and family (e.g., more flexible work hours, more help from spouses with household and child care responsibilities, improved child care, and after-school care arrangements). Parental attitudes toward traditional arrangements, how household tasks were actually divided among family members, and how often the family paid for services (e.g., cleaning, yard work, meal preparation) were also captured. The data also contain information about how children are socialized in families with two working parents. Topics about the frequency with which parents engaged in various activities with their children (e.g., talking, eating meals together, attending religious services), how frequently parents monitored their teenager's activities, and how often they talked with their teenager about school activities, plans for college, career plans, friendships, and peer pressure.
4. The Adolescent Data contains data for sixth through twelfth graders, which focuses on family relationships and experiences, school experiences, paid work, psychological well-being and behavioral problems, and plans for the future (e.g., college, career, and marriage -- including expectations regarding spouses' sharing of responsibility for child care, cooking, chores, and paid work). To allow for comparison of parents' and adolescents' responses to similar questions, several items appear in both the adolescent and parent data. These items include the frequency with which parents and adolescents discuss school events, college and career plans, participation in religious and other activities, gender role attitudes and the division of household tasks within the family, and items measuring depression, stress, and anxiety.

Qualitative Data -- Interviews The main purpose of the interviews was to explore topics addressed in the parent and adolescent surveys in greater detail. Parent interviews were designed to examine how working parents cope with the demands of work and family life. Adolescent interviews touched on similar themes but altered questions to gauge the adolescent's perceptions of their parents work and family lives. Kindergartner interviews were brief and focused on children's after-school and child care arrangements and time spent with parents.

Formerly titled Marital Instability Over the Life Course (MIOLC -- ICPSR 3812), the Work and Family Life Study (WFLS) is a follow-up to the MIOLC. The MIOLC examined the causes of marital instability throughout the life course, and contains 6 waves of data collected between 1980 and 2000, which were gathered from married respondents who were between the ages of 19 and 55.

The Work and Family Life Study provides data for use in assessing: changes in marital quality between 1980 and 2000; the effects of family-of-origin characteristics and marital history on the physical and psychological health of respondents; and evaluating sample attrition, factors which lead to attrition, and attrition bias.

The WFLS collected new cross-sectional information (Part 2 -- Public Use Cross Section, N = 2,189) on married people 55 years of age and younger, using the same sampling procedures and interview questions that were used in the 1980 wave of the MIOLC. The Work and Family Life Study's Public Use Cross Section is the latest addition to the data collections. This new Public Use Cross Section studies the effects of wives' participation in the labor force on marriage and marital instability.

Also provided in this collection are the Public Use All Waves (Part 1, N = 2,034) and the Public Use Panel Wave 6 (Part 3, N = 1,031). The Public Use All Waves contains information from Waves I through VI, which were collected in 1980, 1983, 1987, 1992-1994, 1997, and 2000. Among the variables included in all six waves are age, sex, educational attainment, marital status and history, attitude toward divorce, number of children, religious affiliation, and income level. The Public Use Panel Wave 6 contains data on persons who only responded to wave 6 of the study.

Unique to this data collection, the Public Use Comparison file (Part 4, N = 11,741) contains information on respondents who would have been between the ages of 19 and 55 in 1980, married, and living with their spouse. These data evaluate potential bias from sample attrition in the panel study. The Comparison Sample is a special purpose sample and does not generalize to a normally defined population of ever married persons.

The Youth Development Study (YDS) was initiated as a school-based study of adolescent children and their parents to examine the consequences of formative experiences in adolescence for mental health, value formation, educational achievement, and multiple facets of behavioral adjustment. Particular attention was directed to the impacts of early work experience. Data were also obtained about parent-child and peer relationships and experiences in school. As the study continued, the focus shifted to adult development and attainment and, most recently, mid-life adjustment and health. This comprehensive longitudinal study now encompasses three generations: the initial cohort studied from adolescence to mid-life (G2), their parents (G1), and their adolescent children (G3). Data from three generations in the same families enable study of intergenerational relationships and differences in the experience of adolescence and transition to adulthood across parent and child cohorts. The YDS covers a wide range of topics of interest to sociologists, social psychologists, developmental psychologists, and life course scholars, including the development and impacts of agentic resources, socioeconomic attainment, processes of inter- and intra-generational mobility, objective and subjective work conditions, family relationships, intergenerational relationships, mental and physical health, and well-being.

In-school administration of paper surveys during the first four years of the study was supplemented by mailed surveys. Subsequent data collection took place entirely by mail, with 19 surveys conducted between 1988 and 2011. A final survey was conducted on-line in 2019. Survey data was obtained from the parents (G1) of this cohort during the first and fourth waves of the study (1988 and 1991). Surveys of the children (G3) began in 2009, continued in 2010 and 2011 (by mail) and in 2019-2020 (online).

The Youth Development Study measures a wide range of formative experiences and both psychological and behavioral variables, using survey methodology.

The G1 surveys obtained information about socioeconomic background as well as attitudes toward teenage employment, the parents' own employment as teenagers, their current work experiences, and educational expectations for their children.

The G2 surveys during the high school years included detailed questions about students' work and volunteer experiences, as well as experiences in their family, school, and peer groups, with an emphasis on the ways that working affected other life domains, mental health, and well-being. Shorter surveys containing many of the same topics were administered to students in 1992, 1993, and 1994, and included questions about current family and living arrangements. In 1995, a full survey was administered covering the wide range of topics included in previous surveys as well as information about career plans and life events that had occurred in the past five years. G2 Waves 9 through 19 (1997-2011) included many of the same questions contained in earlier surveys and additional sections that focused on the respondents' educational experiences, family relationships, sources of living expenses, and health and well-being. The most recent G2 survey (2019), administered on-line, included questions about support of aging parents. The YDS is unique in its coverage of both objective and subjective work experiences from adolescence to mid-life.

The topics covered by the G3 surveys are very similar to the G2 variables described above. Variables in each G2 and G3 wave are included in cross-wave codebooks, available at the Data Archive Codebook website.

For an overview of the Youth Development Study, see Mortimer, Jeylan T. (2012) "The Evolution, Contributions, and Prospects of the Youth Development Study: An Investigation in Life Course Social Psychology." Social Psychology Quarterly 75(1, March):5-27.