Housing and Children's Healthy Development Study (HCHD) Wave 2, Cleveland, Ohio, and Dallas, Texas Metropolitan Areas, 2020-2021 (ICPSR 39275)

Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)

Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection

Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes

Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

The goal of the Housing and Children's Healthy Development (HCHD) Study was to better understand how children's residential context--home, neighborhood, school, and family--affects their healthy development. The study was designed to address these policy research questions:

1. What are the effects of housing on children net of the other important influences on children's lives, including their families, neighborhoods, and schools?
2. What features of housing matter most?
3. For whom and in what circumstances does housing matter?
4. How do families with young children make housing, neighborhood, and school choices; what are the effects of these choices; and how would these effects change if their choices changed?

Study Design View help for Study Design

In Wave 1, in-person interviews were completed with 1,801 primary caregivers (PCGs) and 2,328 children ages 3-10 between May 2017 and September 2018. Half of the sample of households were applicants to local Public Housing Authorities (PHA) for a federal housing voucher, with winners selected randomly by lottery. This experimental sample included both winners (treatment group) and losers (control group). The other half of the sample of households was generated by random screening located in census blocks that vary by household income weighted toward lower-income blocks. Each household interview included the collection of anthropometric measures (height, weight, waist and hip measurements, blood pressure monitoring), Woodcock-Johnson cognitive tests of children, dried blood drawn from caregivers and children via pinprick (experimental sample only), and measurement of room sizes using a laser tape measure. The in-person protocol included collection of consent for administrative records-matching, and 8-blockface neighborhood observations.

Wave 2 was originally designed for in-person interviews with caregivers and focal children to follow the conclusion of Wave 1 by 12 months (May 2019) but was delayed twice due to unforeseen circumstances. As a result, Wave 2 was fielded by telephone interviewing from August 2020 through February 2021 and included a coverscreen and PCG questionnaire.

The Wave 2 coverscreen included two sections. The first section was designed to be administered to the Wave 1 primary caregiver (the Wave 1 adult respondent, or PCG). The second section collected a proxy report for the Wave 1 family from a knowledgeable reporter. If the PCG was reported to be deceased, incarcerated, institutionalized or too ill to complete an interview, or was unable to be located or contacted, interviewers were asked to locate a person knowledgeable about the family, and who could report on the whereabouts of the children. The proxy reporter was asked for the reason the child was no longer with the Wave 1 PCG, the name and address of a new PCG for each focal child (if available), the new PCG's relationship to the child. The coverscreen administration ran approximately 5 minutes in length on average.

The Wave 2 PCG questionnaire was based largely on the Wave 1 questionnaire, but was modified by the research team to accommodate the move to a telephone mode of interviewing. For example, questions that used a show card or respondent booklet in Wave 1 were reworded to allow administration without those visual aids, and questions from self-administered questionnaires were integrated into the Wave 2 telephone questionnaire. Additionally, all questions and skip patterns related to measures carried out during in-person interviewing were removed. The PCG questionnaire ran 80 minutes in length on average.

Consent was administered and collected verbally at the start of the coverscreen and at the start of the PCG interview. At the end of the interview, interviewers collected a mailing address for the PCG, and confirmed or updated contact information for up to three persons. Interviewers reminded the PCG that a token of appreciation (in the form of a gift card) would be mailed to the PCG following completion of the interview and introduced the mail data collection for consent to collect administrative records.

Sample View help for Sample

The Housing and Children sample was designed to be a representative sample of the greater Cuyahoga County, Ohio and greater Dallas, Texas areas. Three separate samples were drawn from each area: (1) applicants for housing vouchers likely to be selected to receive housing voucher (the treatment group); (2) applicants unlikely to receive housing voucher (the control group); and (3) general population. All households were required have a child aged 3 to 10 (inclusive) with a parent or guardian in the household to be eligible, living in the household 3 or more days per week. Please see the Wave 1 collection for additional Wave 1 sampling information.

The sample for Wave 2 included all primary caregivers who completed a Wave 1 interview, regardless of whether the eligible children were assessed at Wave 1. The full Wave 1 sample was reduced by five families who withdrew between Wave 1 and Wave 2, five families who were withdrawn by the Cleveland Public Housing Authority, and two families who were identified as duplicates between Wave 1 and Wave 2.

Time Method View help for Time Method

Universe View help for Universe

Primary caregivers (PCGs) who completed a Wave 1 interview, which included PCGs and children aged 3-10 years living in the Cleveland (Cuyahoga County) and Dallas metropolitan areas between 2017 and 2018.

Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation

Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection

Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables

The variable CASEID can be used to link all datasets.

Coverscreen. The coverscreen was used to (1) gather updated address information for the caregiver, and determine if the household was "in area" or "out of area", (2) to determine household eligibility, (3) to gather location information for a separated child, and (4) to gather updated contact person nominations for the Wave 1 caregiver.

Primary Caregiver (PCG) Questionnaire. The Wave 2 PCG interview covered the following topics:

• Demographics (e.g., age, gender, employment)
• Household roster
• Housing characteristics and quality (e.g., number of rooms, spacing, reliability of utilities, security, hazards)
• Housing costs
• Considerations in choosing a residence or neighborhood
• Household income, assets, and debts
• Child/PCG physical and mental health, and impacts of the COVID pandemic
• Child's behavior, care, and education
• Parenting, family environment, and routines

Open-Ended Responses. The research team used a Blaise-to-SAS program to separate close-ended responses from open-ended responses. A "1 (Yes, there is an answer)" will appear in the main data files (datasets 1 and 5) if there is a response provided for that variable in the "Open-Ended Responses" data files (datasets 2, 3, 6, and 7).

Interviewer Remarks. The "Interviewer Remarks" data files (datasets 4, 8, and 9) contain supplemental remarks that are entered by the interviewer. They correspond to the variable indicated from the main data files (datasets 1 and 5), but they do not replace data in those variables. Rather they are contextual notes that the interviewer entered about the response provided by the respondent, especially if the response could not be coded.

Response Rates View help for Response Rates

• Overall (unweighted): 85 percent
• Voucher sample (unweighted): 88 percent
• Population sample (unweighted): 83 percent

Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date

2026-05-07

Version History View help for Version History

Weight View help for Weight

Dataset 5 in this collection contains the final Wave 2 weight variable HCW2_FINAL_WEIGHT. Please refer to the Wave 2 sample weighting adjustments documentation provided by the study team for further details.