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These data were collected for the initial phase of the evaluation of the Children's Futures initiative, a comprehensive set of interventions aimed at improving child health and development outcomes from prenatal to age three in Trenton, New Jersey. To that end, the initiative worked to (1) improve access to prenatal care and strengthen effective parenting, (2) improve the quality of child care, and (3) strengthen and sustain positive involvement of fathers in their children's lives. As part of the evaluation, a baseline community survey and surveys of childcare providers were conducted and births records were obtained from the New Jersey State Department of Health.

Extracted from New Jersey vital events public-use data files, Datasets 1-3 contain information on births during 2001-2004 to women in Trenton and, for comparison, two New Jersey cities not covered by the intervention, Camden and Newark. The birth records data include sex, birth order, birth weight, gestational age, one-minute and five-minute APGAR scores, month of pregnancy when prenatal care began, number of prenatal visits, weight gained during pregnancy, medical risk factors for the pregnancy, obstetric procedures performed, delivery complications, congenital anomalies and abnormalities, mother's marital status and number of live births now living, and the parents' age, race, Hispanic origin, state/country of birth, and education.

Dataset 4 contains data from the baseline community survey, which in 2002 interviewed the primary caregivers of children aged 0-5 in Trenton households. The survey collected information about child and parental health, parenting practices, fathers' involvement in their children's lives, health insurance and health care utilization, attendance at parenting groups or classes, and utilization of child care. Additional information collected by the baseline survey includes United States nativity, year of immigration, race, Hispanic origin, education, employment status, alcohol use, illicit drug use, earnings, and household income.

Datasets 5-7 contain data from the childcare provider surveys conducted in 2003, 2004, and 2005, which collected information about the teachers and childcare providers in the Trenton childcare centers that were participating in Children's Futures. Respondents were questioned about their work experience, age, race, place of residence (ZIP code), education, credentials, position held and hours worked, languages spoken, salary/hourly rate for the job at the center, childcare training and practices, opinions about center staffing levels, and beliefs about how to help infants and toddlers learn and grow. In addition, the respondents were asked how prepared they were to work with infants or toddlers with certain conditions such as emotional disturbances, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), fetal alcohol syndrome, asthma, severe allergies, and developmental delays.

The Children's Futures initiative was designed to enhance the health and well-being of children from birth to age three in Trenton, New Jersey through three major strategies: (1) Improving access to prenatal care and strengthening effective parenting; (2) Improving the quality of child care; and (3) Strengthening and sustaining positive involvement of fathers in their children's lives. As part of the initiative, data were simultaneously collected to assess the effectiveness of the initiative.

The data collection efforts included a baseline survey of the Trenton community conducted in 2002 and surveys of Trenton child care providers conducted in 2003, 2004, and 2005. In addition, births records for Trenton, Camden, and Newark were obtained from the New Jersey State Department of Health. These survey and birth records data were released as ICPSR 21640: Evaluation of Children's Futures: Improving Health and Development Outcomes for Children in Trenton, New Jersey, 2001-2005. The data from the 2002 community survey represents a baseline picture of the primary caregivers of children ages 0-5 in Trenton on a set of outcomes, among them parenting behaviors and strategies that the initiative hoped to influence.

This data collection contains the data from two follow-up community surveys. Like the baseline community survey, the follow-up surveys interviewed the primary caregivers of children aged 0-5 in Trenton households about child and parental health, parenting practices, fathers' involvement in their children's lives, health insurance and health care utilization, attendance at parenting groups or classes, and utilization of child care. In addition, the surveys collected information on country of birth, year of immigration, race, Hispanic origin, education, employment status, alcohol use, earnings, and household income.

The community surveys followed a repeated cross-sectional design. That is, individual community residents were not followed over time; rather, at each wave of data collection, a new sample of respondents were interviewed.

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.

These data were collected as part of the evaluation of the Healthy School Program (HSP), a program that provides support to elementary, middle, and high schools in the United States as they work to create healthy school environments that promote physical activity and healthy eating for students and staff. HSP was created in 2006 by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The HSP evaluation addressed both process and impact outcomes:

1. Is the HSP technical assistance and training model effective in increasing the implementation of policies and programs that promote and provide access to healthier foods and more physical activity before, during and after school?

2. Are there distinctive or common school-level characteristics that hasten or hinder school-level implementation of policies and programs that promote and provide access to healthy foods and physical activity in the school setting in HSP schools?

3. Does participation in HSP contribute to an increase in healthy eating behaviors and physical activity participation among students? Does participation in HSP contribute to a decrease in body mass index (BMI) among students?

The evaluation used a mixed-method design incorporating both quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative component of the evaluation was a longitudinal design that measured student changes in eating and physical activity behaviors and BMI and schools' implementation of policies and practices promoted by HSP. For the qualitative component the evaluation team conducted site visits in a sample of HSP schools.

Nine data files constitute this data collection:

1. HSP Participation and Inventory Data File, 2006-2011 (originally called the Inventory Data File)

2. Pilot Student Survey Data File

3. Pilot Student Height and Weight Measurements Data File

4. Survey of Students in Boston and Miami-Dade Public Schools Data File

5. HSP Participation and Inventory Data File, 2006-2014

6. Arizona, Prince George's County and Nevada Healthy Schools Youth Survey Data File

7. Arizona and Prince George's County Youth Height and Weight Measurements Data File

8. Arizona Academic Achievement Data File

9. Prince George's County School Wellness Coordinator Survey Data File

Dataset 1 contains data on school characteristics, HSP engagement indicators, baseline and follow-up responses to the Healthy Schools Inventory, and indices derived from the Inventory for all HSP schools as of August 2011. The Inventory collected information about each school's adherence to the Healthy Schools Program Framework, a set of best practice guidelines that promote physical activity and healthy eating among students and staff.

Datasets 2, 4 and 6 contain data from baseline and follow-up administrations of the Healthy Schools Youth Survey questionnaire in three samples of HSP schools: students in grades 5-12 in the initial pilot cohort of HSP schools; students in grades 5, 8 and 10 in the 2007-2008 cohort of HSP schools in Boston, Massachusetts and Miami-Dade County, Florida; and students in grades 5, 8 and 10 or 11 in HSP schools in Arizona, Nevada and Prince George's County, Maryland. Topics covered by the Healthy Schools Youth Survey questionnaire include eating and physical activity habits, attitudes about healthy eating and physical activity, health knowledge, and school food environments.

Datasets 3 and 7 contain baseline and follow-up height and weight measurements and derived BMIs, the former for students in grades 4-12 in schools sampled by the Pilot Student Survey and the latter for students in grades 5, 8, and 10 in Arizona and grades 1-12 in Prince George's County in schools sampled by the Arizona, Prince George's County and Nevada Healthy Schools Youth Survey.

Dataset 5 is an update to Dataset 1. Like Dataset 1 it contains data on HSP participation and engagement and school characteristics. Dataset 5 covers 8,500 schools that participated in HSP through fall 2014. It includes 4,028 of the 4,542 schools in Dataset 1.

Dataset 8 contains average math, reading and language scores for grades in HSP and comparable non-HSP schools in Arizona. Every record in the data file represents a grade (one or more of the grades 2-9) within a school (150 schools) for a given school year (up to seven years 2007-2008 to 2013-2014).

Dataset 9 contains data from a survey of HSP school coordinators in Prince Georges County. The coordinators were interviewed about the implementation of HSP in their schools.

ICPSR did not receive the site visit data.

In 2019, RWJF commissioned the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to survey U.S. adults and develop a typology to better understand current mindsets within the U.S. adult population related to resource problems such as: adequate incomes and access to healthy food, child-care programs, and preschool. The idea was to use a typology to understand values and beliefs related to promoting solutions to the problems, including differing views about the deservingness of low-income families, the importance of systemic-level causes, and the proper role for government to play in addressing the problems. The work was to be modeled on previous NORC American Health Values Survey work completed for RWJF.

Specific objectives of the work were to:

• Identify prevailing values and beliefs related to child and family health promotion among U.S. adults, especially those related to the causes, solutions, and impacts of important problems facing families with young children along with who should be responsible for addressing the problems.

• Better understand differences in these values and beliefs through development of a typology.

• Generate strategic insights for stakeholders working to address the important problems facing families with young children.