The Young Adult Survey:

1. The Young Adult Survey: Following the Children of the NLSY79 Mothers into the Future

2. Beginning of the YA Survey • Began in 1994 • Designed to follow the NLSY79 children as they approached adulthood • Children “age up” when they will turn 15 by the end of the current survey year • Age cap of 20 at interview in 1998 • Portion of over-sample cases not fielded in 2000 • No age or sample restrictions since 2002

3. Survey Content • Questions from the earliest years of the Youth • Knowledge of the World of Work • Women’s Roles • Ethnic Identification

4. Survey Content • Questions parallel to the current Youth Survey • Household Record • CPS, Employer Supplements (some questions eliminated), Military Service and Gaps • Fertility • Income (less assets) • Training • Attitudes such as Perlin Mastery, Rosenberg Self-Esteem, and CESD

5. Survey Content • Continued or Parallel questions from the CS/CSAS • Health (routine checks, accidents and injuries) • Dating • Relationship with parents • Some parent/child interaction • Risk Taking • School Experience and Satisfaction • Computer Use

6. Survey Content • Tailored questions for this age group (1) • Information about fathers, especially non-residential ones • Timing of and Reasons for leaving home • Contact with parents as YAs leave home • Marriage and Cohabitation History • High School and College experiences

7. Survey Content • Tailored questions for this age group (2) • Transition into the world of work • Current childcare usage and cost • Greater detail on non-normative activity such as substance use and criminal behavior • Greater detail on sexual activity

8. Survey Content • Major redesign for the 2000 survey (1) • Switch to telephone as primary mode • CPS and Gaps eliminated • Some sections shortened (Employer Supplement, fertility, training) • Questions with complex answer choices broken down into multiple questions • Key questions from Self-Report Booklet converted into CATI/CAPI instrument

9. Survey Content • Major redesign for the 2000 survey (2) • New areas added: • Closeness to Parents • Greater migration sequence • Movement into and out of parent’s home • Ever homeless • Monetary contributions to noncoresidentional children added to fertility • Parenting Attitudes added to fertility

10. Survey Content • Major redesign for the 2000 survey (3) • New areas added: • Modified HOME questions asked about youngest child of respondent in the household • Total family income and financial strain • Addiction to and workplace use of marijuana • Amphetamine usage as a separate series for the first time

11. Survey Content • Redesign for the 2002 survey • New questions in Military to find out whether/when reservists had been called into active duty • Questions about part-time, irregular employment added for younger YAs parallel to those asked in CSAS

12. Survey Content • Redesign for the 2004 survey (1) • Household Record redesigned to reduce interviewer error • Marriage history of spouse/partners asked • Children from other relationships of spouse/partners asked • Monetary contributions of nonresidential parents asked for each biological child

13. Survey Content • Redesign for the 2004 survey (2) • Specific Child Care arrangements dropped • Home Items revised and asked of all children in the HH tied to the YA • Questions about household division of labor and economic enmeshment added for YAs with spouse/partners • Questions about serious but not cohabiting relationships added

14. Survey Content • Redesign for the 2004 survey (3) • Asthma series added • Healthy behavior series added • Gender role items from CSAS added for 14-16 year old YAs

15. Survey Content • Redesign for the 2006 survey (1) • Asthma series tailored to update appropriately • Catastrophic events series added • Questions on assets and debts expanded • Series on financial help with living expenses added

16. Survey Content • Redesign for the 2006 survey (2) • Ten-Item Personality Inventory added • Family conflict series added • Series of political questions added • New series to ascertain biological relatedness among YA and siblings

17. YA 2006 Preliminary Release • Contains an overview with links into questionnaire sections • Has an HTML version of the 2006 questionnaire that is hyper-linked within and across sections • Has raw, unedited data for all interviewed YAs, along with a small number of constructed variables • Can be merged with either the Child/YA 2004 release or the NLSY79 2004 release

18. Navigating in the YA Survey Understanding survey flow and universes

19. YA 2006 Survey Flow Chart • The following screens show a flow chart of the YA 2006 survey • Use this flow chart to: • Understand the general paths through the survey • Understand the universes for survey sections (but not individual items) • For greater detail, refer to the HTML survey

26. Survey Flow for Individual Items • The path a respondent takes is determined by three major sources of information: • Preloaded information from past survey rounds and/or mother’s data • Answers to specific questions in the survey • Values constructed from preloads, answers or a combination thereof

27. The path a typical respondent might take can be explored through following the hyperlinks in the HTML questionnaire • Decide on an age and characteristics (living with mom, in college, etc). • Click on links appropriate to these characteristics and answers you choose • Path can be retraced backwards by using Lead-In links

28. Differences between the HTML questionnaire and the codebook • Codebook is also hyperlinked and can be used to trace survey flow; however, • The HTML questionnaire includes questions that are not released, and • The codebook includes constructed variables that will not be in the questionnaire

29. Examples of questions in questionnaire but not released • Locating or other private data • Verbatims, which may be coded and released as numeric variables such as occupation and industry • Questions that are used as inputs for summary rosters, such as in the household record or the biological child roster; these data are released in their summary form

30. Examples of items in codebook but not in questionnaire • Coded items such as occupation and industry • Constructed variables such as age at first birth or month and year of fist marriage • Cleaned versions of existing variables such as residence

31. Caveats for understanding survey flow and universes (1) • Some questions are asked only the first time a respondent goes through the survey • For example, father’s race is asked only once, during the first YA interview • Usually these questions are directed at 14-16 year olds, but occasionally older YAs are interviewed for their first time • Some items may be deliberately restricted to new YAs under a certain age; e.g., questions about teenage drinking patterns (see YASR-10 for skip into these) • Machine checks prior to substantive questions allow users to understand universes

32. Caveats for understanding survey flow and universes (2) • Some questions are asked only if a positive response has not been given in the past • For example, there are preloaded flags for ever dated, ever been pregnant, ever smoked, ever drank, etc. • Machine checks prior to substantive questions allow users to check universes (e.g., YASR-47) • Occasionally, either respondents change their minds or flags reflect previous interviewer error, so flags may be inconsistent over survey rounds (see YASR-49 for example of an escape clause) • For self-report items, survey checks were not introduced until the 2000 redesign

33. Caveats for understanding survey flow and universes (3) • Some questions have a substantive question needed to understand universes • These substantive questions either allow for a ‘nonnumeric’ response or branch according to the type of response • For example, Q2-4B1 (When did you most recently begin living in this city/town?) offers the answer choices “Select to enter date” and “Lived here all my life” • “Select to enter date” responses are branched to Q2-4B to enter the date, then into the rest of the migration sequence • “Lived here all my life” responses are branched out of the migration questions

34. Caveats for understanding survey flow and universes (4) • Some questions have both a machine check and a substantive question needed to understand universes • For example, Q3-0E is a machine check to see if R has reported dating in the past, and codes of zero branch to Q3-1 • Q3-1 asks age R began dating and offers the choices of “Select to enter age”, “Never started”, and “Volunteered same-sex dating” • “Select to enter age” and “Volunteered same-sex dating” are branched to Q3-1A to enter age • “Never started” responses are branched to the next machine check, Q3-1C

35. Caveats for understanding survey flow and universes (5) • Some questions are only updated since the date of last interview for previously interviewed YAs but ever for new YAs • Generally there are not machine checks available prior to these questions, as text fills determine the question text • The question text in the HTML questionnaire and codebook alerts users to these questions • Bracketed text such as “[Since DLI have you/Have you ever]” will appear in such questions (see Q3-4) • Machine checks that everyone hits, such as Q2-1 (Y1451900 in 2006), allow users to identify new vs. old YAs

36. Understanding Missing Data • Although data extracts with the SAS or SPSS statements option automatically include language to set negative values to special system missing values, users should be aware of what the various missing codes in our data mean so that they can better understand the universes that are missing from various data points

37. Codes of -7 in the Young Adult Data mean a valid skip, indicating that: • The respondent may not have been interviewed in that round, or • The respondent may not have been eligible for a given instrument, or • The respondent may not have entered a given section of the survey, or • The respondent may have been skipped out of a specific path

38. Codes of -7 can be differentiated by: • Using the eligibility and interview status flags for the YA in the Child Background area of interest • Using machine checks within each survey instruments to determine survey paths

39. Codes of -3 in the Young Adult Data mean an invalid skip, indicating that: • The respondent did not answer questions that should have been answered (YASRB in 1996 and 1998), or • The one or more of the inputs needed to construct a variable are missing, or • There was a problem with preload data or the system during an interview • Users should note that in the CAPI/CATI data an invalid skip will show up in the machine checks that branch the respondents into questions, not in the questions themselves

40. Codes of -2 and -1 in the Young Adult Data are respondent answers: • Codes of -2 indicates a response of Don’t Know • Codes of -1 indicates a refusal to answer

46. Cross-Generational Research Possibilities Later Childhood Early and Middle Childhood Adulthood Maternal Background & Experience

47. Potential areas to explore • Family Transitions • Parenting Attitudes and Behavior • Educational Attainment • School to Work Transition • Labor Force Participation • Occupational/Status Attainment • Transmission of Attitudes and Beliefs • Deviance across generations

49. Content Crosswalks • The following tables help you: • Examine some of the attitudinal and behavioral items asked of the mothers, the children and the Young Adults • See the frequency with which some of these questions have been asked • Locate key variables in the Young Adult data files