Search results

These data were collected to evaluate the effectiveness of CASAWORKS for Families (CWF), a multiservice intervention designed to move substance abusing women on welfare to sobriety and self-sufficiency by addressing their substance abuse, domestic violence, employment, and basic needs. Conducted at 11 sites across the country, the evaluation was designed as a repeated measures, pre-during-post field evaluation with no pre-specified control or comparison groups. The results of this evaluation were primarily intended to guide a proposed second-stage experimental study of the effectiveness of an enhanced and refined CWF model.

When the potential participant presented herself at the CWF site, a research technician administered a specially modified version of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI), referred to as the Welfare to Work ASI (WTW-ASI). This version retained the ASI 5th edition as the core instrument but added questions in an addendum. The baseline WTW-ASI measured the severity of problems in nine areas: employment, medical status, alcohol use, drug use, legal status, family and social relationships, children and child care, basic needs, and psychiatric symptoms. In addition, the four-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), the Parenting Dimensions Inventory (PDI), and the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (PDS) were used to assess depression, parenting style, and posttraumatic stress disorder, respectively. The PDI, CES-D, and a follow-up version of WTW-ASI were also administered 6 and 12 months after intake.

Two instruments were used at baseline and at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months postbaseline to record the services provided by CWF: Welfare to Work version of the Treatment Services Review (TSR-WTW) and Case Management Review (CMR). The former mostly collected data on the number of treatment services received, such as doctor visits, therapy sessions, and days of inpatient treatment in the prior 30 days, while the latter collected data on the activities of the case management sessions and topics covered with the case managers. Activities recorded by the CMR included working on self-sufficiency plans, arrangement of follow-up services, skills development, crisis response, and advocating for the client. Topics covered included employment, substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence, parenting and child care, basic needs, life skills, and social support.

In order to compare the characteristics of the CWF clients with the general population of women who received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the study also collected WTW-ASI data from women in the general TANF population in the CWF locales regardless of their substance-use status.

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.

Downloads of Add Health require submission of the following information, which is shared with the original producer of Add Health: supervisor name, supervisor email, and reason for download. A Data Guide for this study is available as a web page and for download.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), 1994-2018 [Public Use] is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents in grades 7 through 12 during the 1994-1995 school year. The Add Health cohort was followed into young adulthood with four in-home interviews, the most recent conducted in 2008 when the sample was aged 24-32. Add Health combines longitudinal survey data on respondents' social, economic, psychological, and physical well-being with contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships.

Add Health Wave I data collection took place between September 1994 and December 1995, and included both an in-school questionnaire and in-home interview. The in-school questionnaire was administered to more than 90,000 students in grades 7 through 12, and gathered information on social and demographic characteristics of adolescent respondents, education and occupation of parents, household structure, expectations for the future, self-esteem, health status, risk behaviors, friendships, and school-year extracurricular activities. All students listed on a sample school's roster were eligible for selection into the core in-home interview sample. In-home interviews included topics such as health status, health-facility utilization, nutrition, peer networks, decision-making processes, family composition and dynamics, educational aspirations and expectations, employment experience, romantic and sexual partnerships, substance use, and criminal activities. A parent, preferably the resident mother, of each adolescent respondent interviewed in Wave I was also asked to complete an interviewer-assisted questionnaire covering topics such as inheritable health conditions, marriages and marriage-like relationships, neighborhood characteristics, involvement in volunteer, civic, and school activities, health-affecting behaviors, education and employment, household income and economic assistance, parent-adolescent communication and interaction, parent's familiarity with the adolescent's friends and friends' parents.

Add Health data collection recommenced for Wave II from April to August 1996, and included almost 15,000 follow-up in-home interviews with adolescents from Wave I. Interview questions were generally similar to Wave I, but also included questions about sun exposure and more detailed nutrition questions. Respondents were asked to report their height and weight during the course of the interview, and were also weighed and measured by the interviewer.

From August 2001 to April 2002, Wave III data were collected through in-home interviews with 15,170 Wave I respondents (now 18 to 26 years old), as well as interviews with their partners. Respondents were administered survey questions designed to obtain information about family, relationships, sexual experiences, childbearing, and educational histories, labor force involvement, civic participation, religion and spirituality, mental health, health insurance, illness, delinquency and violence, gambling, substance abuse, and involvement with the criminal justice system. High School Transcript Release Forms were also collected at Wave III, and these data comprise the Education Data component of the Add Health study.

Wave IV in-home interviews were conducted in 2008 and 2009 when the original Wave I respondents were 24 to 32 years old. Longitudinal survey data were collected on the social, economic, psychological, and health circumstances of respondents, as well as longitudinal geographic data. Survey questions were expanded on educational transitions, economic status and financial resources and strains, sleep patterns and sleep quality, eating habits and nutrition, illnesses and medications, physical activities, emotional content and quality of current or most recent romantic/cohabiting/marriage relationships, and maltreatment during childhood by caregivers. Dates and circumstances of key life events occurring in young adulthood were also recorded, including a complete marriage and cohabitation history, full pregnancy and fertility histories from both men and women, an educational history of dates of degrees and school attendance, contact with the criminal justice system, military service, and various employment events, including the date of first and current jobs, with respective information on occupation, industry, wages, hours, and benefits. Finally, physical measurements and biospecimens were also collected at Wave IV, and included anthropometric measures of weight, height and waist circumference, cardiovascular measures such as systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and pulse, metabolic measures from dried blood spots assayed for lipids, glucose, and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), measures of inflammation and immune function, including High sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).

Wave V data collection took place from 2016 to 2018, when the original Wave I respondents were 33 to 43 years old. For the first time, a mixed mode survey design was used. In addition, several experiments were embedded in early phases of the data collection to test response to various treatments. A similar range of data was collected on social, environmental, economic, behavioral, and health circumstances of respondents, with the addition of retrospective child health and socio-economic status questions. Physical measurements and biospecimens were again collected at Wave V, and included most of the same measures as at Wave IV.

The overall goal of Wave VI was to better understand life course trajectories, determinants, and consequences of critical dimensions of aging, health, and health disparities among U.S. early midlife adults. Data collection took place from 2022 to 2025, with participants between the ages of 39 and 51, with an average age of 44. Beyond longitudinal survey measures, newly added questions included those on cumulative stress, discrimination, despair, work-life balance, memory, physical limitations, and caregiving. Continuing from previous waves, home exams collected physical measurements and biospecimens with most of the same measures as Wave V.