Child Development Supplement

Introduction to the CDS

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is a longitudinal survey of a nationally-representative sample of U.S. families that began in 1968. The original 1968 PSID sample came from two sources: a nationally representative sample of approximately 3,000 families designed by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan (the “SRC sample”) and an over-sample of approximately 2,000 low-income families from the Survey of Economic Opportunity (the “SEO sample”). PSID interviewed individuals from families in these two samples every year from 1968 to 1996 and biennially thereafter—whether or not they were living together in the same dwelling. In 1997, because of the escalation in costs driven by the doubling of the sample size during its 30-year history, PSID was forced to drop some families from the study. The cuts were made from the SEO sample. Between 1997 and 1999, an immigrant refresher added to PSID a representative sample of families that had moved to the U.S. between 1968 and 1997.

Little information on children in PSID families was obtained until 1997, when extensive data collection began on the original PSID Child Development Supplement (CDS). CDS was launched with the goal of improving the understanding of social, psychological, and economic aspects of childhood within an ongoing nationally-representative, longitudinal study of U.S. families. Information was collected on psychological and social wellbeing, health status and behavior, family environment, education, child care, time use, sibling relationships, caregiver social and psychological resources, absent parents, future work and schooling expectations, and religiosity.

The original CDS began in 1997 with a cohort of 3,563 children from 2,394 families (88% of those selected). Up to two children aged 0–12 years were randomly selected in each family and interviews were conducted with the children’s primary caregivers (PCGs; usually the children’s mother). Eligible CDS participants were descended by blood or adoption from the original 1968 PSID lineage or the 1997 PSID immigrant refresher sample. In most cases, this means that the child’s father or mother is the child or grandchild of an original 1968 PSID respondent.

In 2002/2003, CDS families who participated in the 2001 Core PSID were contacted for a second round of data collection. CDS-II successfully re-interviewed 2,019 families (91%) who provided data on 2,907 children and adolescents aged 5–18 years. During 2007/2008, 1,506 children aged 10–19 years were successfully re-interviewed (90%). For CDS-III, a completed interview as reported by either the child or the PCG constituted a successful re-interview, reflecting older children’s ability to provide self-reported information, as compared with CDS-I and CDS-II when the children were younger requiring a completed interview from the PCG for a case to be considered a completed interview.

By 2014, all of the children in the original 1997 CDS cohort had reached adulthood, and a new generation of children had replaced them in PSID families. The goal for CDS-2014 was to collect information on all PSID children aged 0–17 years in this new generation, and to shift the orientation of CDS from a study of a single cohort—as was done in the original CDS—to a study obtaining information on the childhood experiences of all children in PSID families in 2014 and at planned five-year intervals that will support research based on multiple cohorts of PSID children. These new data will allow studies of health, development, and well-being in childhood;the relationship between children’s characteristics and contemporaneous family decisionmaking and behavior; and the effects of childhood factors on subsequent social, demographic, economic, and health outcomes over the entire life course for these individuals as they are followed into the future as part of the ongoing Core PSID.

The CDS-2014 sample included all PSID families that completed a Core PSID interview in 2013 and had one or more resident children. CDS-2014 participants form a nationally-representative sample of children descended from the original 1968 families and the 1997 new immigrant refresher sample. (The CDS-2014 sample does not cover children from families in which both parents are post-1997 immigrants to the U.S.) All eligible PSID children in each family were selected for CDS-2014, in contrast to the limit of two children per family in the original CDS. Fieldwork began in the fall of 2014 and continued through to the spring of 2015.

CDS-2014 was primarily a telephone interview; however, a random 50 percent of households were selected to receive an in-home visit to collect information that could not be obtained reliably by telephone. The in-home component included reading and math assessments for children (and reading assessments for PCGs), time diaries for a random weekday and a random weekend day, and interviews with children aged 8–11 years. The in-home visits facilitated the collection of other study components that were otherwise collected using a mail-out/mail-back protocol, including saliva samples for subsequent genotyping and anthropometric measurements.

The content of the new, ongoing CDS is similar to that in the original CDS. Interviews were completed with PCGs and with older children themselves.

CDS-2014 provides rich, comprehensive, and up-to-date information on a large, nationally-representative sample of children that includes an over-sample of African American children and a representative sample of immigrant children. Public use data are available free of charge through the PSID Online Data Center (www.psidonline.org), which provides customized extracts and codebooks using a detailed index of variables. Sensitive information from CDS-2014 are designated as restricted data, but are available to researchers through a data contract.

There are several unique features of CDS-2014 that will provide many important research opportunities to analysts. First, because the CDS children’s parents are also participants in PSID, there is an enormous amount of data available from previous waves of Core PSID on many aspects of their lives—as well as the lives of parents’ parents (the CDS-2014 children’s grandparents). These data can be combined to intergenerational transmission of human and social capital as well as health status. Information is available in CDS-2014 on siblings and cousins, providing unique research opportunities. Second, many of the CDS-2014 children were born to members of the original CDS cohort, providing unique opportunities to examine intergenerational connections in child development and behavior. Third, the original CDS and the new CDS-2014 will allow researchers to study cohort differences in development between children born from 1985 to 1996 and those born from 1997 to 2013, as well as differences between younger and older members of these cohorts. Fourth, as CDS-2014 children move into adulthood, they will be interviewed in the PSID Transition into Adulthood Supplement in 2017 and beyond, and will also become primary PSID respondents. The information collected in the new CDS will provide invaluable insights into the effects of childhood experiences and circumstances on later adult development and on adult social, demographic, economic, and health outcomes. Finally, the genetic markers from CDS-2014 will allow researchers to address a number of important scientific questions that span the interests of population geneticists and social scientists.

Study Components

	Original CDS			Ongoing CDS
	1997 (CDS-I)	2002 (CDS-II)	2007 (CDS-III)	2014	2019 (Not yet released)
Survey Interviews
Primary Caregiver (PCG) Household	X	X	X	X
PCG-Child	X	X	X	X
Child	X	X	X	X
Secondary Caregiver	X	X	X
Absent Father	X
Teacher	X
School Administrator	X
Child Demographic File				X
Household Roster				X
Woodcock-Johnson Cognitive Achievement Assessment
Primary Caregiver	X			X
Child	X	X	X	X
Time Diary	X	X	X	X
Genomic data
Primary Caregiver				X
Child				X
Other adults in family

Questionnaire Content

Primary Caregiver Household Interview

The PCG Household (PCG-HH) Interview focuses on the characteristics of a child’s family, household, and neighborhood. The interview also collects extensive information on the PCG’s own psychological resources, social support, parenting stress, parenting style, and childrearing values. Unless otherwise noted, items in the PCG-HH interview were administered to all PCGs.

Topics included in the PCG-HH Interview are described below. The measurement resource table in Appendix A documents the source and original author of questionnaire content where appropriate. Note that PCG-HH Interview content begins with Section J (Neighborhood Measurements). Sections A–H appear in the PCG-Child interview.

Neighborhood Measurements (Section J). Eight items assess the PCG’s perception of neighborhood quality, including residential stability, residential satisfaction, neighborhood anonymity, social cohesion, and neighborhood safety. The series appears in the questionnaire as Items J1 to J8.

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale for Primary Caregivers (Section K). The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale describes the degree of approval or disapproval toward oneself.The scale is widely used, with substantial documentation on its validity and reliability. PCGs reported on a series of 10 items using a response scale ranging from 1 to 4, where 1 indicates “Strongly Disagree” and 4 indicates “Strongly Agree.” The series appears in the PCG-HH Instrument as Items K1 to K10. The scale score is computed as an average of responses to these ten items and is available for respondents who have valid values on at least eight items (H14SLFEST)

Childrearing Values (Section M). Respondents ranked the qualities or traits they consider most important to prepare a child for life from a set of five choices. Traits include obedience, popularity, autonomy, a strong work ethic, and altruism. The series appears in items M3A to M3D. These items appeared in the Detroit Area Study and the General Social Survey.,

Aggravation in Parenting (Section M). The aggravation in parenting scale (M4–M10) measures parenting stress that may result from changes in employment, income, and other factors in the lives of PCGs. Items M4 to M7 address parenting in general. Items M8 to M10 focus on the PCG’s feelings about his/her children in CDS collectively. In CDS I-III, items M8 to M10 were asked during the PCG-Child interview about each child separately. To reduce burden on caregivers in large families, these items were moved to the PCG-HH interview and asked only once in CDS-2014. The generated variable H14PARENT is a mean score derived from the seven items in the scale. A mean score was computed for all cases with valid values on at least five items.

Work/Life Adjustments for Children (Section M). In Items M11 to M13, PCGs reported whether they ever changed neighborhoods or employment conditions to improve circumstances for their children.

Attitudes about Gender Roles (Section M). Items M14 to M25 measure the PCG’s level of agreement with nine statements pertaining to gender role attitudes and three statements drawn from the “Being a Father” Scale. Four items measuring gender role attitudes and four items from the “Being a Father” Scale that were included in CDS I-III were excluded from CDS-2014. The choice of items to retain was guided by factor analysis using data from CDS-II and CDS-III. Variables with the highest factor loadings on the constructs of traditional marriage values, traditional mothering values, equity, and father involvement were retained. Each construct is represented by three variables.

Caregiver Psychological Distress (Section N). The Kessler 6 (K-6) Non-Specific Psychological Distress Scale (N1–N6) was designed to discriminate cases of serious mental illness from non-cases in a general population survey. The K-6 is administered to respondents in the PSID Core interview and is also included in the National Health Interview Survey and the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, as well as in Core PSID.

The K-6 includes six items about how the respondent felt during the prior four weeks. Response items are based on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates “all of the time” and 5 indicates “none of the time.” Individual items may be rescored to range from 0 to 4 and then summed to calculate a total score that is comparable to other studies. A summed score of 13 or higher indicates a potential for nonspecific distress. The generated variable H14k6_14 is a sum score computed for all cases with valid responses to all six items in the scale.

The scale includes three follow-up items about persistence and impairment associated with symptoms of nonspecific distress (N7–N9).These items are administered to respondents who endorse any of the items in the K-6 series. Responses to these additional items are not required in order to score the K-6.

Family Pets (Section P). Section P includes seven questions about the number and types of pets in families and the PCG’s interaction with and attitudes about his or her pets. These items are new to CDS-2014. The source of the items is the CENSHARE Pet Attachment Scale. See the measurement resource table in Appendix A for details.

Disagreement in Parenting and Joint Goals (Section Q). The Parental Disagreement Scale measures the extent of agreement on daily activities between a PCG and his or her spouse or partner (Q1–Q5). The items were administered only to PCGs who had a spouse or cohabiting partner in the household. The generated variable H14DISAGR is a mean score derived from the five items in the scale for all cases with valid values on at least four items. Three items measure the extent to which the PCG and his or her spouse or partner have joint goals for the future (Q6–Q8). Five items measure methods of conflict resolution among family members (Q9–Q13).

Food Security (Section R). The PCG-HH interview included an 18-item version of the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module developed by the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (R1–R15). The module includes questions about various levels of food security such as worries about having enough food and enough healthy food, cutting back to conserve food, and running out of money for food. The module collects information about household (R1–R8) and child (R9–R15) food security separately. These data allow the food security status of CDS-2014 families to be defined along a continuum extending from high food security to low food security. Generated variables associated with this series include raw scores summing the number of endorsed items pertaining to the household overall (H14HHFOODR) and separately for adults (H14ADFOODR) and children (H14CHFOODR). A parallel set of items describes the food insecurity status of the household overall (H14HHFOOD) and of adults (H14ADFOOD) and children (H14CHFOOD) in the household. A raw sum score (H14FOOD6R) and a food insecurity status indicator (H14FOOD6) based on a six-item subset of questionnaire items (R2–R6) are also available.

An instrument programming error present at the beginning of data collection caused some eligible respondents to be skipped out of a more detailed set of questions about household and child food insecurity. Both the household and child sections of the food security module include a first stage screener composed of three items. As designed, a respondent who endorses any item at the first stage as “often true” or “sometimes true” should advance to the second stage of the module. However the instrument programming error caused respondents to advance to the second stage only when they endorsed at least two of the three items (R1–R3 for household food security and R9–R11 for child food security). This error was corrected during the seventh week of fieldwork.

Of 256 PCGs who endorsed exactly 1 item in the R1–R3 series and who should have advanced to R4–R7, 98 did not advance. Those who did advance (i.e., who were interviewed after the programming error was corrected) reported more extreme food insecurity much less often compared to respondents who endorsed two or three items in the R1–R3 series.

Of 315 PCGSs who endorsed exactly 1 item in the R9–R11 series and who should have advanced to R12–R15, 116 did not advance. Those who did advance reported relatively low levels of heightened food insecurity in R12–R15.

Home Environment (Section S). The Home Environment section collects information about children’s access to learning resources and technology in the home, the PCG’s involvement in her or his children’s school and learning at home, and the PCG’s own school enrollment, employment circumstances, and religiosity.

Children’s Access to Technology.Content on children’s access to and use of technology at home was significantly expanded for CDS-2014 to accommodate the emergence of new technologies and applications since 2007. Topics in the PCG-HH include the types and number of electronic devices in the home, including televisions, computers, tablets, and cellular telephones (S1–S8 and S14A–S14D); shared television viewing habits (S9–S10); and household rules about television viewing (S11–S13) and use of other electronic devices (S14G–S14L). This section also includes an adapted 6-item web-use skills index originally developed by Hargittai and Hsieh to measure the PCG’s familiarity with computer and internet-related terminology (S14N1–S14N6).

Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME Scale). The HOME Scale measures characteristics of a child’s home environment that are associated with cognitive development and emotional support. HOME Scale content in the PCG-HH interview includes questions about how often the family engages in specific activities together, including meals (M1), socializing (M2), and television viewing (S9–S10); the number of books in the home (including electronic books, S15–S16); and the number of books the PCG has read in the last year (S17–S18).

Questions about whether the family receives a daily newspaper or carries a subscription to any magazine that were included in previous rounds of CDS were excluded from CDS-2014 because of the rapid and uneven decline in the availability of printed periodicals in regional markets during the last decade.

The complete contents of the HOME Scale and the location of individual items are described in Appendix A.

School Involvement. Two items in the PCG-HH interview address the PCG’s volunteer activities at his or her child(ren)’s school (S19–S20). These items were included in the PCG-Child interview in CDS I-III, but question wording was revised in 2014 to solicit responses about activities at any child’s school, rather than at each child’ school. Six other items addressing the PCG’s school involvement are included in the PCG-Child interview.

Response to Poor Grades. Twelve items ask PCGs about actions they would expect to take in response to a child’s poor grades (S21–S30B). These items were included in the PCG-Child interview in CDS I-III, but question wording was revised in 2014 to solicit responses about expected actions in response to any child’s poor grades, rather than about each child’s grades.

Own Schooling. PCGs report whether they are currently attending school, and if so, the number of hours they attend school each week and travel time (S31–S31B).

Employment Characteristics. PCGs report whether they are currently working, and if so, report on characteristics of their employment such as number of jobs, hours worked weekly, nonstandard work schedules, and commuting time.

Religiosity. PCGs reported how often they attended religious services in the past year (S39–S40) and on the importance of religion and spirituality in their lives (S41–S42).

Woodcock-Johnson Revised Test of Achievement - Passage Comprehension. In families that were randomly selected for the in-person supplemental interview, interviewers administered the Passage Comprehension subtest from the Woodcock-Johnson Revised Tests of Achievement (WJR), Form B to PCGs. The Spanish version of the WJ-R (Batería-R, Form A) was used for PCGs whose first language was Spanish and who elected to complete the assessment in that language.

The Passage Comprehension subtest measures understanding of written text. Respondents read a sentence or brief paragraph and provide the word that is missing from the passage. Indicators of whether a correct response was offered to each item are available. In addition, generated variables associated with the PCG passage comprehension assessment include a total raw score (H14PCRAW), a standardized score (H14PCSS), a percentile score (H14PCPR), and a W score (H14PCW). For more information, see the PSID Technical Report entitled “Achievement Tests in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement,” available at [1].

Interviewer Observations (Section OB). Interviewers provided structured and open-ended observations on the interviews they conducted, on the respondents, and on the respondents’ household environment.

Post-Woodcock-Johnson Assessment Observations. Interviewers recorded whether others were present during the administration of the WJ-R Passage Comprehension assessment and whether anything out of the ordinary occurred that might have affected the respondent’s performance (ASOB1–ASOB5).

Post-Interview Observations (Telephone). Interviewers recorded their assessment of the respondent’s verbal fluency, comprehension, and self-expression at the conclusion of the PCG telephone interview (PCGOB1–PCGOB5).

Post-Interview Observations (Household). Where families were randomly selected for the in-person supplemental interview, interviewers reported their observations about the physical appearance and quality of the dwelling and the neighborhood (PCGOB6–PCGOB19).

Primary Caregiver Child Interview

Throughout the PCG-Child interview, questions are tailored to specific age groups of children to maximize question relevance and minimize recall error. See the questionnaire for age and/or school grade ranges for each item and for rules governing skip patterns throughout the instrument. Child age and school grade are based on child characteristics at the time of the household screening interview to determine eligibility.

Child Health (Section A). Questions about the physical health of each child (A2–A19) are drawn from the National Health Interview Survey and from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Topics include general health status, birth weight, breastfeeding, medical care, immunization status, diagnosis of chronic conditions, asthma, and disability.

Questionnaire items about birth weight are directed only to PCGs only when the child’s birth weight does not appear in the birth history collected as part of the PSID Core interview (A4–A4_KG). Where birth weight was already available, this information is provided in the CDS-2014 Demographics file (X14BWTP1–X14OS3B1 [biological mother report], X14BWTP2–X14OS3B2 [biological father report], X14BWTP3–X14OS3B3 [adoptive mother report], and X14BWTP4–X14OS3B4 [biological mother report]).

Information on breastfeeding duration is collected only where a CDS child is between ages 0 and 5 years at the time of the CDS household eligibility screening interview. Question wording is identical to CDS I-III.

Psychological Wellbeing, Personality, and Behavior (Section B). This section collected, for each child, modules covering the Behavioral Problems Index, positive behavior, prosocial behavior, and sibling interaction.

Behavior Problems Index. The 30-item Behavior Problems Index (BPI) was developed by James Peterson and Nicholas Zill from the Achenbach Behavior Problems Checklist to measure in a survey setting the incidence and severity of child behavior problems. In CDS-2014, the BPI was administered to PCGs of children who were between ages 3 and 17 years (B1–B30). Caregivers of children between 6 and 17 years old responded to two additional items specifically addressing children’s behavior at school (B31–B32). PCGs indicated whether the behavior or trait described in each item in the series was often, sometimes, or never true of the child.

Overall scale scores and subscale scores for internalizing and externalizing behavior are included in the public-use data. To construct scale scores, responses from each item were collapsed into a corresponding two-category variable and coded “1” if the behavior described was often or sometimes true for the child and “0” if never true. These dichotomous variables were summed to calculate an overall behavior problems score. For children aged 3 years and older, the overall scale score includes 27 of the items in B1 to B30 (P14BPI_T) and excludes items B23, B28, and B29, which did not load on to either of the subscale scores. For children aged 6 years and older, a second overall scale score is available (P14BPI_T29). This 29-item scale score includes responses to items B31 to B32 as well as each of the items included in P14BPI_T.

Subscale scores were constructed for externalizing behavior from a subset of 15 items (P14BPI_E15) for children aged 3 years and older. For children aged 6 years and older, a second externalizing behavior scale score is available (P14BPI_E), which includes responses to items B31 to B32 as well as each of the items included in P14BPI_E15. The internalizing behavior score for all children aged 3 years and older is constructed from a subset of 14 items (P14BPI_N). Table 2.2 shows the items included in each scale score.

Positive Behavior. The Positive Behavior Scale (PBS) measures positive aspects of children’s behavior and disposition, including self-esteem, social competence, self-control, compliance, and persistence (B33–B42). The scale includes 10 items measured on a five-point scale ranging from “Not at all like your child” to “Totally like your child.” Items remain identical in wording and sequencing to CDS I-III. Items were administered to PCGs of children aged 6–11 years.

A positive behavior scale score is provided (P14POSBEH). The score is computed as the average value of the constituent items where the PCG provided at least valid responses to at least eight items.

Prosocial Behavior. Five items from the “Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire” (B43–B47) measure children’s prosocial behavior in the preceding six months, including sharing, consideration of the feelings of others, and volunteering to help others. Response options range from 1 (“Not true”) to 3 (“Certainly true”). The scale was administered to PCGs of children between ages 3 and 11 years in the PCG-Child questionnaire. These items are new in CDS-2014.

A prosocial behavior scale score is provided (P14PROSOC). Constituent items were rescaled to range from 0 (“Not true”) to 2 “(Certainly true”) and then summed. The scale score was constructed only for those cases providing a valid response to each of the five items in the scale.

Sibling Interaction. Five items describe the frequency of helping and prosocial behaviors expressed toward siblings among children who are between ages 3 and 11 years and who have a sibling in the household (B48–B52). Items remain identical in wording and sequencing to CDS I-III.

Parenting and Family Interaction (Section C). Section C includes information about family routines, household rules, discipline strategies, parent-child discussion topics, and the PCG’s familiarity with children’s friendship networks. The universe for the items in this section varies depending on child age and grade. Many of these characterize the aspects of children’s home environments that are conducive to cognitive development and emotional support.

Items pertaining to household rules were revised compared to CDS I-III in order to accommodate new response options. In all waves, respondents were asked about whether there were household rules governing a variety of activities, including where and how children spend their time, homework, and television viewing. Previously, the response options were limited to “Yes” (i.e., there are household rules) and “No” (i.e., there are no household rules). In order to better characterize how household rules are implemented, the response categories were expanded as follows: “Yes, there are clear rules and they are enforced (1);” “Yes, there are general rules and they are monitored (2);” “Yes, there are rules, but child makes own choices (3);” and “No (there are no rules) (5).” In response to feedback received when the instrument was pre-tested, two additional categories were added for volunteered responses that that the child was too young (6) or too old (7) for household rules related to a particular activity or domain.

Nonresident Parent (Section D and Nonresident Parent Block). The nonresident parent modules are administered to PCGs where at least one biological or adoptive parent is not living in the child’s household at the time of interview. Content in Section D includes whether the child has another adoptive parent, stepparent, or parent figure; whether the parent is still living, and if not, when the parent died; when the child and nonresident parent last lived together, if ever; and how often the parent and child communicate and visit. Questions are asked separately for nonresident mothers and fathers.

The Nonresident Parent Block collects information from the PCG about the nonresident parent of each CDS child in the household. That is, when two children have different nonresident biological parents, the Nonresident Parent Block collects information on each parent separately. Content includes the parent’s residential proximity, whether she or he has other children and/or is married; and the PCG’s frequency of contact and conflict with the parent.

Question wording is identical to CDS-II and CDS-III. However, the Nonresident Parent Block is new to CDS-2014 and was developed in order to ask only once about each nonresident biological parent whom CDS children in the household had in common.

Home Environment (Section E). Section E includes information about children’s access to learning resources and technology at home and about children’s learning and social activities in the community. PCGs also report who paid for children’s fee-based activities such as arts instruction, athletics, and tutoring.

The Home Environment section also includes new content on children’s use of technology at home, including whether the child has their own electronic device or devices such as a computer, tablet, or cellular telephone or smartphone (E47–E50); frequency of activities such as homework and social interaction using electronic devices (E51–E56); and recent help-seeking and help-giving associated with computer use at home (E57–E58).

The universe for the items in this section varies depending on child age and grade. Many of these items are used in constructing the HOME Scale to characterize the aspects of children’s home environments that are conducive to cognitive development and emotional support. Four new items (E43–E46) measuring the amount of choice children are permitted in decisions about their activities and home environment were developed for inclusion in the HOME Scale in consultation with Robert Bradley (Arizona State University) and Pamela Davis-Kean (University of Michigan). With the exception of these items and the new content on children’s computer and related technology use, content in this section is identical in question wording and response options to content included in CDS I-III.

Child Education (Section F and Schools Block). Section F collected information on the PCG’s educational aspirations and expectations for the CDS child (F2–F3) and the CDS child’s educational history and current status. Content includes whether the child attended an early intervention preschool program such as Head Start (F4–F8); age at kindergarten entry (F9–F12); recent school changes (F13); attendance at public and private schools (F14–F19); attendance in classes for gifted students (F20); classification as requiring special education (F21–F22); suspensions and expulsions (F23); grade retention (F24–F24A); school dropout (F26); home schooling (F33); participation in subsidized meal programs at school F27–F32); PCG involvement at the child’s school (F34–F38); and PCG involvement with the child’s education at home (F39–F41).

The universe for the items in this section varies depending on child age and grade. Question wording is identical to CDS I-III. Response options to some items differ compared to CDS I-III due to backcoding on some open-ended responses and to keep response categories consistent with those used with similar items elsewhere in the instrument (e.g., item F15C, “Who paid [CHILD’s] private school expenses?”).

In the Schools block, PCGs provide the name and location of the school where each child is currently enrolled. This information is matched to the Common Core of Data and Private Schools Survey databases maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education. Numeric school identifiers are available to qualified researchers under a restricted-use data agreement. Visit the PSID web site for more information on restricted-use agreements [2].

Expenditures and Savings. Seven items measure frequency, amount, and conditions of children’s receipt of an allowance (G1–G6). Eleven items measure family members’ savings and investments on behalf of children, including savings for college (G7–G13, G20–G20A). Six items describe expectations about college expenses.

Child Care (Child Care Block). For children in sixth grade and younger, PCGs describe arrangements in the past four weeks for all child care regularly provided by someone other than the PCG and his/her spouse or partner. This includes information on the type of arrangement (e.g., relative-based in-home care or child care center), the number of days and hours a child is in care each week, and the cost of care.

Child Interview

Race and Ethnicity (Section A). Youth aged 12–17 years self-reported their Hispanic ethnicity (A1), racial or ethnic group (A2), and, where relevant, Asian ancestry (A2a). Response categories are the same as those used in the Core PSID interview in 2013. Respondents chose a single response category for each item. An open-ended “other-specify” field allowed respondents to mention multiple racial or ethnic identities.

See the Demographic File for parent-reported information on children’s race and ethnicity for all children in CDS-2014.

Ability Self-Concepts in Math and Reading (Section B). The Ability Self-Concepts items (B2–B9) reflect two scales to self-assess ability in the domains of math and reading. The number of items in the series was reduced from 20 (used in CDS I-III) to nine in consultation with Jacqueline Eccles, the scale’s developer.

Academic performance (Section B). Adolescents reported grades earned in the most recent completed semester in mathematics and English (B10–B11), current cumulative grade point average (B12), and grades earned in eighth grade (B14).

Future plans (Section B). Adolescents (11th grade and up, including high school leavers or graduates) described their aspirations and plans for college attendance and information about college provided by their high school; and plans to serve in the armed forces (B15–B32A).

Health (Section C). This section covers questions on general health status, depression, and physical development.

General health. Youth aged 10–17 years reported on their general health status (C1); perceived weight status (C2); recent efforts to change or maintain weight through diet or exercise (C3–C5); and general emotional health.

Depression. Adolescents (age 12–17 years) completed the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) Short Form (C8–C17). The CDI is an assessment that rates the severity of symptoms related to depression or dysthymic disorder in children and adolescents.

To protect respondent privacy, interviewers directed adolescents to read the response options for each item to themselves in their response booklets and to provide the numeric code corresponding to the statement that best describes their feelings during the last two weeks. The interviewer presented the response options aloud only where the respondent did not have his or her response booklet available.

Physical development. Youth age 10 years and older reported on the onset of puberty, including physical appearance relative to age peers; breast development and age at menarche for girls; and facial hair growth and voice changing for boys.

To present questions about physical development to youth aged 10-11 years who were interviewed in person, field interviewers handed the child an envelope containing show cards on which the questions and response options appeared. The child read each question and response options silently and then responded with the letter corresponding to the category best matching their answer.

Adolescents (age 12–17 years) responded to the same questions using their telephone keypad during a computerized interview administered using interactive voice response technology (IVR, see Section J below).

Questionnaire items appear in Section C for younger children and in Section J for adolescents. The corresponding variables in the public-use data file are C18–C25 and JC18–JC25. In addition, the variable series C18x to C25x pools responses to individual items across the two age groups. For example, item C18x includes responses to item C18 from children aged 10–11 years and to item JC18 from youth aged 12–17 years.

Social Relationships (Section D). Children describe how close they feel to parents, stepparents, friends, siblings, teachers, and other adults (D1A–D2, ages 8–17 years); friends’ positive and negative behaviors (D3A–D3M, ages 10–17 years); and characteristics of and interactions with family pets (D4–D12, ages 8–17 years). Content about closeness to others and friend characteristics was administered in CDS-II and CDS-III. Content about family pets is new in CDS-2014. The source of the items is the CENSHARE Pet Attachment Scale.

Personality and Behavior (Section E). This section includes modules on children’s self-esteem, perseverance, and peer problems.

Self-Esteem. Children aged 10–17 years responded to a five-item version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale that excluded negatively worded items (E1–E5). Four of the items appeared in the original Rosenberg scale. A fifth item, “I feel good about myself,” is a positively-worded version of the statement “At times I think I am no good at all.”

This revised version of the Rosenberg self-esteem scale was used in the 2012 sweep of the Millennium Cohort Study in Great Britain, when focal children were age 11 years. It was adopted for inclusion in CDS-2014 in place of the Global Self-Concept subscale that was included in CDS I-III.

Perseverance. Children aged 10–17 years responded to a five-item scale measuring perseverance (E6–E10). Scale content and ordering is identical to CDS-II and CDS-III.

Peer Problems. Five items from the “Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire” measure children’s peer problems in the preceding six months, including usually being alone, whether the child has at least one friend, whether others generally like the child, whether other children pick on the child, and whether the child relates better to adults than to other children (E11–E15). Response options range from 1 (“Not true”) to 3 (“Certainly true”). These items are new in CDS-2014.

Employment (Section F). Children aged 12–17 years described current and past summer employment, including occupation, industry, tenure, work hours, wages, and job satisfaction (F1–F20) and job aspirations (F21_1–F25). Content and question wording are identical to CDS-II and CDS-III.

Computers and Electronic Media Use (Section G). Content on children’s access to and use of technology at home was significantly expanded for CDS-2014. For children aged 8–17 years, the Child Interview collected information on the electronic devices owned by children (G1–G5), internet access (G6–G7), computer/electronic device use for schoolwork, information-seeking, social interaction, and entertainment (G8–G21).

A 6-item web-use skills index adapted from Hargittai and Hsieh measures the child’s familiarity with computer and internet-related terminology (G23A–G23F).

Two items measure the exchange of assistance with computers or other electronic devices between the child and their PCG in the past 30 days (G24–G25).

Financial Behavior (Section H). Three items collect information about the frequency, amount, and conditions of a child’s allowance (H1–H3, ages 8–17 years). Six items address the amount and intended purpose of a child’s own financial savings (H4–H9, ages 8–17 years). Children aged 12–17 years report on their own and their PCG’s past-year charitable donations (H10–H11). Question H11 is new in CDS-2014.

Sensitive Topics (Section J). Questions on sensitive topics were administered using interactive voice response (IVR) technology in order to ensure respondent privacy and minimize response bias during the telephone interview.

Some content from Section J of the Child Interview is available only through a restricted-use agreement with the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This content is denoted below. Information about how to establish a restricted-use agreement is available at [3].

Introductory items record respondent self-reported age and gender (J0a–J0b).

Peer Victimization and Bullying. Four items (J1a–J1d) address peer victimization and bullying. These items were drawn from work by Kochenderfer and Ladd and were also included in CDS-II and CDS-III. The introduction to these items was modified in CDS-2014 to include the internet as a context where respondents might have experienced victimization.

Dating. Four items pertain to respondents’ experience with dating (J2–J4). These items were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and were included in CDS-II and CDS-III.

Physical development. Youth aged 10 years and older reported on the onset of puberty, including physical appearance relative to age peers; breast development and age at menarche for girls; and facial hair growth and voice changing for boys. Adolescents responded to these items as part of the IVR interview.

Note that questionnaire items on physical development appear in Section J for adolescents and in Section C for younger children. The corresponding variables in the public-use data file are JC18–JC25 and C18–C25. In addition, the variable series C18x to C25x pools responses to individual items across the two age groups. For example, item C18x includes responses to item C18 from children aged 10-11 years old and to item JC18 from youth aged 12–17 years.

Sexual Health and Activity (Restricted-Use Only). Adolescents reported on age at first sexual intercourse (J5–J7b), recent frequency (J8–J9), and lifetime number of partners (J10). All sexually active respondents report on frequency of condom use (J11); female respondents also report on use of birth control pills (J12–J13c). All respondents report on whether they have ever been tested for or diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection (J14–J16a). Male and female adolescents responded to items about pregnancy experience (becoming pregnant or impregnating someone else), frequency, and outcomes (J16–J21).

Risky Behavior (Restricted-Use Only). Adolescents reported on the frequency of behaviors including staying out past curfew, physically harming others, damaging property, bringing a weapon or drugs or alcohol to school, and truancy (J22–J31, J34–J35). The series also included questions about contact with law enforcement, including being stopped and questioned or arrested (J32–J33).

Tobacco, Drug, and Alcohol Use (Restricted-Use Only). Adolescents reported on lifetime and past thirty day use of tobacco products, electronic cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, inhalants, hallucinogens, prescription drugs taken without a prescription from a doctor, amphetamines, and tranquilizers. In addition, respondents reported on frequency of heavy drinking, type of alcohol most often consumed, and frequency of driving while intoxicated or riding with an intoxicated driver. Items were originally drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and most were included in CDS-III. Content was updated in CDS-2014 in consultation with investigators from Monitoring the Future, an annual study of middle and high school students designed to track trends in adolescent substance use.

IVR Interview Experience. Adolescents responded to three items about the accuracy of their responses and the ease or difficulty of completing the IVR interview (J65–J67).

Files unique to Ongoing CDS

Household Roster File. A household roster collected during the initial screening interview gathered information on all individuals living in a CDS child’s household. The CDS-2014 Household Roster File includes one record for each household member residing with a CDS child (N=10,453). Contents include the CDS household identifier (R14CDSHID) and individuals’ PSID 1968 ID and person number (R14ID68 and R14PN), position in the CDS roster, age in years, and sex. A person type indicator describes whether each individual is a CDS child, a CDS caregiver, or other household member (R14TYPE). In 24 households, two primary caregivers are present, each caring for a different child or children. The variable R14CDSHPIN may be used to distinguish caregivers who coreside and have a common CDS household identifier.

NOTE: Seventy-nine individuals observed in a CDS-2014 household have never appeared in a PSID household at the time of the Core interview and have never been reported in a PSID participant’s marriage or birth history. These individuals have not been assigned a PSID person number (i.e., no value on ER30002) and information about them cannot be merged on to any other individual-level information in the PSID Data Center. These individuals have been assigned a value of 999 for R14PN.

Demographic File. The Demographic File includes one record for each child who appears in the CDS-2014 public release (N=4,333). This file contains study information including the interview components completed for the child and date of interview; information about the child including his/her race ethnicity and birth weight (pulled in from the PSID birth history file); interviewer observations about the child (in-home supplement sample only); and child and primary caregiver sampling weights.

The Demographic File also contains information on the age, sex, and relationship to CDS child of all household members present at the time of the CDS-2014 screening interview (X14R01SEX–X14R15UNC2). Individual household members are indexed by their position in the household roster (see above for information on the Roster File). For example, X14R01SEX reports the sex of Person 1 on the Household Roster, X14R02SEX reports the sex of Person 2, etc. The order in which the screener respondent listed household members determines an individual’s position on the roster. A CDS child’s position in the roster is reported in X14WHICH. The primary caregiver’s relationship to a CDS child is described in X14PCGRLSP.

Time Diaries

The time diaries are one of the unique features of the CDS design and provide data of central importance to scientists in many disciplines. While the primary caregiver (PCG) and Child interviews include stylized questions about the children’s structured and unstructured activities and activities with parents and absent parents, the time diaries provide detailed accounting of the type, number, duration, and location of activities during sampled 24-hour days, beginning at midnight for one randomly sampled weekday and one randomly sampled weekend day. The time diaries additionally collect information on the social context of the activity by specifying with whom the child was doing the activity and who else was present but not engaging.

With child-based weights, the time diaries give a representative national sample of children’s activities and can also be converted into traditional time use aggregates, which are known to provide less biased estimates of time amounts than do self-reports of time in particular activities (Juster, Ono, and Stafford, 2003 ). By nature of the CDS design, the rich time diary data can be used with the detailed information in the other CDS modules as a way to examine influences on key developmental outcomes and achievement patterns and can also be used with PSID data to parcel out the ways in which family characteristics tie into children’s activity choices and developmental outcomes.

Data Collection

We invited CDS children and youth to complete a set of time diaries as part of their involvement in the overall CDS data collection effort. Each participating child completed two time diaries, a weekday (Monday-Friday) and weekend day (Saturday or Sunday). These days were randomly selected when the interviewer completed the initial contact for the household. There was no substitution of diary days once they were assigned to the CDS child/youth.

In all three waves, the CDS time diary was a paper diary that was mailed ahead before the scheduled interview, with instructions to complete prior to the interview. During the in-house CDS interview or by telephone, the interviewer reviewed and edited the diary with the child and primary caregiver or, in the situations whereby the diary was not completed in advance, the interviewer administered the diary as an interview.

Coding

We utilized the same interviewing procedures and coding protocols for the time use module in all three waves of the CDS. With the increase in technology in the intervening years between CDS-II and CDS-III, some activity codes were added to the "computer-related activities" grouping to capture more detail in the use of cell phones for playing games, downloading movies/music, reading email, social networking, reading media, and searching for information. Codes were also added to the “organizational activities” group to differentiate activities occuring at school or elsewhere. Refer to Appendix A of the CDS 2007 Time Diary Coding Manual for details on these changes.

The activity codes utilized in CDS-III are easily mapped back to the prior waves. CDS-II created a four-digit activity code whereby the first three digits reflect the 1997 code. If the code was expanded to capture more specific detail, a sequential number beginning with “2” was added as the fourth digit. The fourth (last) digit is a “0” for any code that remained identical to CDS-I code, or in the case of an expanded code category for CDS-II, a “0” in the fourth digit indicates a catch-all / unspecified code for that particular activity.

Data Files

The CDS time diary data files are posted on the PSID-CDS Data Center (http://simba.isr.umich.edu/), freely accessible to researchers worldwide who are interested in using the data. The data are available at the activity level for CDS-III (57,813 records), with the activities also grouped into broader or “aggregated” variables at the child level

Time Diary Activity-Level Files

The Time Diary Activity data file is structured at the activity level, meaning one data record per activity per diary per child. There are three important identifiers in this file: (1) the ID68 (ER30001)-PN (ER30002) combination to identify the child for whom the activity belongs, (2) the “Diary_07” variable to identify if the activity belongs to a weekday or a weekend diary (we reviewed earlier that each child had up to two diaries taken – one for a randomly selected weekday and one for a randomly selected weekend day; note that “T1_07” specifies the actual day of the week), and (3) the start time of the activity, variable “COLB_07”. Start- and end-times are represented in seconds past midnight. The duration of the activities are recorded as amount of time in seconds that the activity took place.

Time Diary Aggregate Files

In addition to the activity-level files, there are child-level time diary files which “roll-up” individual activities in several ways: at the four-and three-digit code levels, which take all of the time spent in each of the activities and sum them across the diary day, and at the two-digit level, which aggregate time per diary day by 39 activity categories. These aggregate files are posted at the child-level, facilitating their use with developmental data from the other CDS modules, including (but not limited to) achievement measures, physical and emotional health assessments, and family environment measures, or with PSID family economic and demographic data.

In the aggregate file, there is one record per child and a variable that will tell you if that child has weekday diary data and another variable that will tell you if the child has weekend diary data. The labeling convention is, as follows:

Variables that begin with “WD” indicate that it is a “weekday” activity; variables that begin with “WE” indicate that it is a “weekend” activity. For CDS-III, the next two components of the variable name is “07”, meaning, data collection start year 2007.

As mentioned above, there are four-digit aggregate variables, three-digit aggregate variables, and two-digit aggregate variables. You can ascertain the level of the aggregation by the naming convention. For the variables that roll up the activities at the four-digit level, the next four components of the variable name are the four-digit code for the activity. For the variables that roll up the activities at the three-digit level, the next four components of the variable name are an underscore (“_”) and the three-digit equivalent (or, CDS-I equivalent) for the activity. For the variables that roll up the activities at the two-digit level, the next four components of the variable name are “39nn”, representing 39 categories and the two-digit code for the activity.

Sample

	Original CDS			Ongoing CDS
	1997 (CDS-I)	2002 (CDS-II)	2007 (CDS-III)	2014	2019 (Not yet released)
Child years of birth	1985-1997			1997*-2013	2002-2018
Child age years	0-12	5-17	10-17	0-17	0-17
Number of age-eligible children selected per family	Up to 2			No limit (max. observed=8)	No limit
Response rate
Primary caregivers (PCGs)
PCG Household interview	1,536	2,009	1,250	2,517
Cognitive achievement assessment
Genomic data
Other (secondary) Caregiver (OCG) interview
Children
Primary Caregiver Child interview	3,563	2,907	1,608	4,314
Child interview
Sample size/Age eligibility (years)	Assessments only/3-12 (in-person)	2,182/10-17 (in-person)	1,506/10-17 (in-person)	1,508/8-11 (in person) 12-17 (telephone)	8-11 (in person) 12-17 (telephone)
Cognitive achievement assessment (3 years and older)	2,228	2,644	1,506	1,498
Time diary (all ages)		2,569	1,442	1,566
Demographic file				4,333
Genomic data (5 years and older)

*Born after original CDS sample was selected (not eligible for original CDS)

Sampling Weights

CDS-2014 weights allow researchers to generalize their statistical results using these data to the national population of children corresponding to CDS-2014 selection criteria, while accounting for uneven selection probabilities and differential non-response. The CDS-2014 PCG weights similarly allow researchers to generalize their results to the national population of children’s caregivers. We recommend that researchers use the provided CDS-2014 weights with all analyses.

The main CDS-2014 child weight includes a base component derived from the 2013 Core PSID weight that accounts for differential sample selection probabilities and attrition in Core PSID. The CDS-2014 child weight also incorporates differential probabilities of selection for sample children as well as differential patterns of non-response. CDS-2014 child weights are provided to account for the PSID sampling design, the CDS-2014 selection process, and patterns of non-response. The CDS-2014 PCG weights were derived directly from the child weights. This chapter describes the construction of the CDS-2014 weights.

For CDS-2014, a main child weight was constructed for each child in the survey who completed one or both of the following two modules: (1) the Primary Caregiver (PCG) Child Interview and (2) the Child Interview. All children in CDS-2014 were eligible for a PCG-Child Interview. A Child Interview was only administered to children aged 8–17 years. All children aged 12–17 years were asked to complete a Child interview. However, among children aged 8–11 years, only those in families selected at random for the in-home supplement were eligible for the Child Interview. (Approximately half of all families and children were selected for the in-home supplement.)

The main child weight for CDS-2014 is the variable X14CHWGT, which has one value for each of the 4,333 children in the sample. A second child weight is also available for CDS-2014, X14IHWGT, which is to be used when analyzing the in-home subsample of CDS-2014 cases. Both weights are to be used with child-level data in CDS-2014 and both weights are designed to be used for analyses with the child as the unit of observation. The PCG weight for CDS-2014 is the variable H14PCGWGT, which has one value for each of the 2,517 PCGs in the sample—which includes PCGs who completed the PCG Household Interview but for whom no corresponding child-level data are available.

The CDS-2014 Main Child Weight is to be used for all analyses based on the PCG-Child Interview because this interview component includes one observation for each child in the sample. This weight should not be used for analysis based on data from the in-home modules, which have observations only for a subset of the CDS-2014 sample.

The CDS-2014 Child In-Home Weight should be used for analysis based on the survey components that were only conducted during the face-to-face visits, including the time diaries and the Woodcock-Johnson assessments of reading and math.

For analysts using the Child Interview data, special care must be taken to choose the correct weight, because Child Interviews for one segment of the sample (children aged 8–11 years) were only conducted as part of the in-home component. Table 5.1 describes the appropriate weight to use based on the ages of children with Child Interview data being analyzed. Note that for analyses based on all children aged 8–17 who completed the Child Interview, the analyst must create a new variable with values equal to X14IHWGT for children aged 8–11 years and X14CHWGT for children aged 12–17 years.

Table 5.1. Use of CDS-2014 Weights for Analyzing Interview Data

Analysis sample	Recommended weight
Child interview data for children aged 12–17 years	X14CHWGT
Child interview data for children aged 8–11 years	X14IHWGT and X14CHWGT for children aged 12–17 years
Child interview data for children aged 8–17 years	X14IHWGT for children aged 8–11 years
Primary caregiver interview data	H14PCGWGT

We provide further guidance on how researchers can conduct weighted analyses of other CDS-2014 components at the end of this chapter.

Overview of Method to Construct CDS-2014 Child Weights

We first constructed the CDS-2014 Main Child Weight, which was then modified to produce the CDS-2014 Child In-Home Weight. The basic steps to producing these weights were as follows:

1. Account for all probabilities of selection for eligible families and children through to the initial determination of eligibility for CDS-2014.
2. Adjust for CDS-2014 non-response.
3. Set aside the small number of CDS-2014 cases residing outside the U.S., for which their CDS-2014 Main Child Weight is now final.
4. Post-stratify the attrition-adjusted CDS-2014 sample selection weights to 2014 American Community Survey (ACS) adjusted population totals based on year of birth, gender, race, and Census region.
5. Trim very large and very small values of the post-stratified weights.
6. Post-stratify the trimmed weights to produce the final CDS-2014 Main Child Weight for the cases currently residing in the U.S.
7. Pool the U.S cases and non-U.S. cases for CDS-2014, which both now have their final Main Child Weight.
8. Adjust the final CDS-2014 Main Child Weight to produce the CDS-2014 Child In-Home Weight.

Table 5.2 summarizes the CDS-2014 sample based on key features that shape the construction of the weights.

Table 5.2. Summary of CDS-2014 Child Cases for Weights

Description	Count
Initial total eligible cases for CDS-2014	5,816
Deselected cases from the double-sample stage	180
Total final eligible cases for CDS-2014	5,636
Completed PCG-Child or Child Interview cases	4,333
Non-U.S. cases	17
U.S. cases	4,316
In-home sample cases	2.152
Non-U.S. cases	4
U.S. cases	2,148

Method to Construct CDS-2014 Child Weights

In this section, we provide a more detailed description of the process for constructing the CDS-2014 weights.

Step 1. Selection Probabilities for CDS-2014

For all eligible CDS-2014 child cases (n=5,816), a base probability of selection weight was established using the household weight from the 2013 Core PSID.

Step 2. Non-Response Adjustment

A non-response adjustment factor for the weight was obtained from a logistic regression model of the response outcome. All eligible CDS-2014 child cases were included in the model. Data from the 2013 Core PSID were used as covariates in the model predicting an indicator of non-response, y, with y=0 if the case was non-response and y=1 if the case was coded as complete. The estimated coefficients and standard errors for the logistic regression model are reported in Table 5.3.

The results indicate that the probability of response in CDS-2014 was higher among African Americans and whites, in households headed by women, and in households with fewer children; the probability of response was lower in households with missing information about the head’s education and in households outside the U.S. Although a number of variables in the response propensity model that are not statistically significant predictors of CDS-2014 response (e.g., household income, metro status, and Census region), these non-significant variables were retained in the model used to derive estimates of the propensity of response. Overall, the Hosmer-Lemeshow test of goodness of fit test (X2=11.47, 8 df, p=0.18) suggests that the response model provides an acceptable fit.

Based on the estimated logistic regression model, predicted probabilities of response were computed for each CDS sample case and grouped into deciles. These decile groups served as the classes within which a uniform non-response weighting adjustment was applied. Each respondent case was assigned a non-response adjustment factor equal to the inverse of the median predicted probability of successful CDS 2014-interview within its decile weighting class. The median response propensity and adjustment factor for each decile of the predicted probability response in CDS-2014 are shown in Table 5.4.

Table 5.4. CDS-2014 Median Response Propensity and Weighting Adjustment Factor

Response propensity decile	Median response propensity	Adjustment factor
1	0.646	1.548
2	0.706	1.417
3	0.735	1.361
4	0.755	1.325
5	0.771	1.297
6	0.785	1.274
7	0.800	1.251
8	0.814	1.229
9	0.831	1.204
10	0.854	1.170

The probability of selection weight for each CDS-2014 observation was then multiplied by the non-response adjustment factor to produce an interim weight that adjusts for probability of selection and CDS-2014 nonresponse.

Step 3. Non-U.S. Cases

There were 30 eligible cases in CDS-2014 that resided outside the U.S. during the fieldwork period. Although interviews were attempted for all of these cases and completed among some of them, these cases are not included in the post-stratification because the control total for the post-stratification process are based on the U.S. resident population. At this step, for the non-U.S. CDS-2014 cases, the Main Child Weight is designated to be complete.

Step 4. Post-Stratification to Population Control Totals

We next post-stratified the CDS-2014 interim weights from Step 2 to population control totals calculated using data from the 2013 American Community Survey. Strata were formed based on the following respondent characteristics:

• Child sex (male/female)
• Birth year of child (1997–2013)
• Child race/ethnicity (Hispanic, non-Hispanic black, non-Hispanic white or other)
• Census region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West

Strata defined by the full four-way cross-classification of these categorical variables were collapsed as needed to ensure a minimum count of approximately 15–20 individuals in each cell. Table 5.5 shows the CDS sample count and CDS weighted estimates, the ACS population estimates, and the post-stratification adjustment factors for each of the 105 cells defined by birth year, sex, race/ethnicity, and region. Note that CDS-2014 excluded some children born in early 1997 (who were selected to participate in the original CDS) and some children born in late 2013 (after the 2013 Core PSID interview was completed). The ACS control totals shown in Table 4.5 and used in the post-stratification weighting have been constructed to exclude children born outside the CDS-2014 eligibility window in 1997 and 2013.

The initial post-stratification adjustment factors were computed as the ratio of the ACS control totals to the CDS-2014 weighted population estimate count (using the interim weight from Step 2). The initial post-stratification adjustment factors were then applied to the interim weight to produce an initial post-stratified weight.

Step 5. Trimming of Weights

The distribution of the interim, post-stratified weights was examined and a decision was made to trim extreme values at each end of the distribution. The reason for trimming the weights is to reduce the influence of extreme weight values on the variances of sample estimates of population statistics. Trimming the weight distribution also provides some protection against arbitrary combinations of extreme weights and large or unique values of substantive variables that could exert high leverage on multivariate analyses such as regression modeling. The trimming rule applied to the CDS-2014 Main Child Weight assigned the cases with the weight values in the top two percent and in the bottom two percent of the weight distribution to the 98th and 2nd percentile values of the weight distribution, respectively.

Step 6. Post-Stratification after Trimming of Weights

After trimming the weights, the post-stratification procedure (Step 4) was repeated so that the final trimmed weights again matched the desired ACS population control totals.

Step 7. Combining the U.S. and Non-U.S. Cases

The final step in creating the Main Child Weight is to combine the weights from Step 6 for cases in the U.S with the weights from Step 3 for the non-U.S. cases.

Step 8. Produce the CDS-2014 In-Home Child Weight

Half of the CDS-2014 families were randomly selected to receive an in-home visit. The selection process was probability-based, but all cases did not have an equal chance of selection for the in-home survey administration. To account for the subsampling of CDS families for in-home interview administration, the CDS-2014 Child In-Home Weight includes an additional sample selection adjustment to the Main Child Weight. These adjusted weights were then post-stratified to the ACS population control totals using a process identical to that described in Steps 4–6 above, except that due the smaller sample size for the in-home interviews a further collapsing of strata was necessary. Census region was dropped entirely from the post-stratification scheme and wider birth-year cells were used. The revised post-stratification scheme is shown in Table 5.6.

Method to Construct CDS-2014 PCG Weights

The CDS-2014 PCG weight was derived entirely from the CDS-2014 Main Child Weight. In particular, PCGs in CDS-2014 were assigned the average weight over all children for whom they were the responsible primary caregiver. For PCGs for whom there were no corresponding children in the sample (because no child interview components were completed and hence no child weight was constructed), a PCG weight was calculated based on imputed values for the missing child weights. Missing child weights were imputed based on predicted values from a regression model that included covariates from the child-level non-response model described above and the 2013 Core PSID weight.

Summary of CDS-2014 Weights

In Table 5.7 we list the CDS-2014 child weights and the PCG weight and present case counts and summary statistics. that the case count for the Main Child Weight (4,333) is approximately twice the count for the Child In-Home Weight, reflecting the fact that approximately half of the CDS-2014 sample was selected for the in-home component. The mean weight for the Child In-Home Weight (28,241.22) is correspondingly about twice as large as the mean weight for the Main Child Weight (14,061.74), reflecting the fact that these two samples both weight to the same national population of children. Note also that the weighted total population from both CDS-2014 samples is approximately 61 million children, which is about 83 percent of the estimated U.S. population of children aged 0–17 years of 73 million in 2013. The PSID count is lower primarily because it excludes children in post-1997 immigrant families and includes only about half of children in the youngest and oldest single-year age groups.

Table 5.7. Summary of CDS-2014 Weights

Weight description	Variable Name	Count	1st Percentile	50th Percentile	99th Percentile	Mean	Std. dev.
Main Child Weight	X14CHWGT	4,333	467.77	11,630.53	52,932.32	14,061.74	12,598.15
Child In-Home Weight	X14IHWGT	2,152	774.08	15,239.32	163,847.80	28,241.22	36,175.60
PCG Weight	H14PCGWGT	2,517	465.20	11,772.56	51,226.46	14,018.62	12,358.21

The case count for the PCG weight is 2,517 and the mean weight is 14,018.62, which (by construction) is very similar to the mean for Main Child Weight (14,061.74). The weighted total population of PCGs in CDS-2014 is 35 million.

Recommendations for Using the CDS-2014 Weights

In this section, we summarize our recommendations for using the CDS-2014 weights. Our basic recommendation is for data users to always use the provided weights in all of their analyses. In addition, we recommend that, when calculating standard errors, data users should wherever possible account for the clustering of the CDS-2014 data by family. Standard errors should reflect the fact that siblings are more likely to have similar outcomes and characteristics than children selected at random. Controlling for family-level clustering of siblings also provides an appropriate correction due to clustering of families by household or neighborhood and recognizes the fact that generally it is only possible to control for a single level of clustering. Furthermore, when analyses focus on a subset of children (from either the full sample or the in-home component), data users should use an appropriate “sub-population” adjustment. Clustering-corrected standard errors and sub-population commands are available in most standard statistical software (including SAS and Stata).

Main Child Weight (X14CHWGT). This weight should be used for all analyses in which the full sample of children in CDS-2014 are the focus of the analysis. This is the weight to use with data from the PCG Child Instrument or for data on children aged 12–17 years from the Child Instrument.

Child In-Home Weight (X14IHWGT). This weight should be used for all analyses in which the analysis focuses on measures available only in the in-home component of CDS-2014, which includes the following components: Child Interviews for children aged 8–11 years, the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement in reading and math, and the CDS Time Diaries.

PCG Weight (H14PCGWGT). This weight should be used for all analyses in which the sample of PCGs in CDS-2014 are the focus of the analysis. This is the weight to use with data from the PCG Household Instrument or for other data on PCGs.

Finally, if users have questions about whether their analyses should be weighted or unweighted or about how to reflect the sampling design in their calculation of parameter estimates and standard errors, they should consult with a survey statistician.