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.

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)