Questionnaire Description Conventions

Here we refer to individual items by their location in the questionnaire, typically a one-letter prefix followed by one or more digits. For example, item J1 in the PCG’s household questionnaire refers to the first item appearing in Section J of that interview.

The response data associated with these questionnaire items appear as variables in the PSID data center. Variables associated with specific questionnaire items are named using the following structure:

1. The leading character(s) refers to the study component from which the questionnaire item is drawn:

H = PCG Household Interview P = PCG Child Interview C = Child Interview (interview completed by CDS child) A = Child Assessments X = Demographics D = Time Diary Questionnaire R = Roster WD/WE = Time Diary Aggregated Activity File COLA – COLJ = Time Diary Activity File (disaggregated)

2. The following two characters in the variable refer to the calendar year that data collection began. For variable names associated with CDS-2014, these characters are always “14.” Previous waves of CDS did not adopt this naming convention across all items.

3. The remaining characters in the variable name refer to the location of the item in the questionnaire.

4. Generated variables (i.e., constructed scale scores, interview information like calendar dates, and other variables produced by PSID staff) adopt naming conventions (1) and (2). For these variables, the remaining characters typically use a mnemonic device to help users identify the variable’s content. For example, the variable name associated with Item J1 from the PCG Household Interview is H14J1. The “Disagreement in Parenting” scale score, a generated variable constructed from responses to several component items in the PCG Household Interview, is named H14DISAGR.