Child Development Supplement

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
Woodcock-Johnson Cognitive Achievement Assessment
Primary Caregiver	X
Child	X	X	X	X
Time Diary	X	X	X	X
Genomic data
Primary Caregiver				X
Child				X
Other adults in family

Questionare 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.<ref>Rosenberg, M.(1986).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.