The New Immigrant Survey Round 1 (NIS-2003-1), United States, 2003-2004 [Public and Restricted-Use Version 1] (ICPSR 38031)

Version Date: Nov 8, 2022

Principal Investigator(s):
Guillermina Jasso, New York University; Douglas Massey, Princeton University. Office of Population Research; Mark Rosenzweig, Yale University; James Smith, RAND Corporation

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38031.v1

Version V1 ()

  • V3 [2025-08-25]
  • V2 [2024-11-21] unpublished
  • V1 [2022-11-08] unpublished

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Additional details may be in the Version History or Data Collection Notes fields of the study metadata.

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Alternate Title

NIS-2003-1 Version 1

Summary

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.

Interviews were conducted in the respondents' language of choice. The Round 1 questionnaire 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.

Citation

Jasso, Guillermina, Massey, Douglas, Rosenzweig, Mark, and Smith, James. The New Immigrant Survey Round 1 (NIS-2003-1), United States, 2003-2004 [Public and Restricted-Use Version 1]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-11-08. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38031.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health, United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Aging, United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (HD33843), National Science Foundation (SRS-9907421, SES-0096867), United States. Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States. Department of Health and Human Services. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Pew Charitable Trusts

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

State

Restrictions

This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited. To protect respondent privacy, this data collection is restricted from general dissemination. To obtain this file, researchers must agree to the terms and conditions of a Restricted Data Use Agreement in accordance with existing ICPSR servicing policies.

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2003 -- 2004

Date of Collection

2003-06 -- 2004-06

Data Collection Notes

  1. Version 1 of The New Immigrant Survey Round 1 study contains variables pertaining to respondents' demographics. The Version 2 study contains information pertaining to the respondents' immigration details and geographic identifiers.

  2. At the request of the PI, only the curated Restricted-Use datasets and the Section Roster Public-Use datasets (unprocessed and provided to approved users in a compressed zip package) are included as part of this study's initial release by ICPSR. The curated Public-Use datasets will be made available in a future update.

  3. For the Restricted-Use datasets, two of the sample groups in this study, Adult and Proxy Child, possess the same variables in their respective twelve section datasets. Four of the ten Spouse sample section datasets, NonCash Payments, Employment, Health, and Height and Weight, possess the same variables that can be found in the Adult and Proxy Child sample counterparts. The remaining six datasets in the Spouse sample possess lower variable counts compared to the Adult and Proxy Child sample counterparts.

  4. Datasets in this study that contain "(ppp)" in their name indicate that they have purchasing power parities calculated.

  5. For more information, please visit The New Immigrant Survey website.
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Study Purpose

The purpose of The New Immigrant Survey (NIS) was to obtain a general overview of the population of legal immigrants to the United States. Aims of the study included assessing changes in immigrants' lifestyles, evaluating employment situations and societal assimilations, and examining the education of immigrants and their transition towards permanent citizenship.

Study Design

The New Immigrant Survey (NIS) was a nationally representative, multi-cohort, longitudinal study. Interviews were conducted in the respondents' language of choice. 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.

Sample

The sampling frame consists of new-arrival immigrants and adjustee immigrants. New-arrival immigrants are those who are arriving in the United States with immigrant documents acquired abroad while adjustee immigrants are already in the United States with a temporary nonimmigrant visa and adjust to lawful permanent residence. The Adult and Child Samples are defined in terms of immigration category and age. The Adult Sample covers all immigrants who are 18 years of age or older at admission to the Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR) program. The Child Sample covers immigrants with child-of-U.S.-citizen visas who are under 18 years of age and adopted orphans under five years of age. 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 first full cohort (NIS-2003-1) was sampled during May through November of 2003, yielding data on:

  • 8,573 Adult Sample respondents;
  • 810 sponsor-parent of the Sampled Child;
  • 4,915 spouses; and
  • 1,226 children aged 8-12.

The baseline survey was conducted from June 2003 to June 2004. 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. A follow-up interview with 2003 cohort was conducted from June 2007 to October 2009 (NIS-2003-2). The number of completed interviews with main sampled immigrants was:

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

Time Method

Longitudinal: Cohort / Event-based

Universe

Legal immigrants to the United States and their families.

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Source

Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS)

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Description of Variables

  • HEALTH MEASURES: self-reports of conditions, symptoms, functional status, hygienic behaviors (e.g., smoking and drinking history), use/source/costs of health care services, depression, pain;
  • BACKGROUND: Childhood history and living conditions, education, migration history, marital history, military history, fertility history, language skills, employment history in the U.S. and in foreign countries, social networks, religion;
  • FAMILY: rosters of all children; for each, demographic attributes, summary indicators of childhood and current health, education, language ability, current work status, migration. Parent and sibling information;
  • TRANSFERS: financial assistance given/received to/from respondent from/to relatives, friends, employer;
  • ECONOMIC: sources and amounts of income, including wages, pensions, and government subsidies; type, value of assets and debts;
  • HOUSING ENVIRONMENT: type, ownership of consumer durables

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Original Release Date

2022-11-08

Version History

2022-11-08 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Created variable labels and/or value labels.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

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Weight

Datasets 1, 23, and 45 (Section Roster Public-Use) contain the weight variable NISWGTSAMP1.

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