CDS-2014 Questionnaire

General Principles for the CDS-2014 Questionnaire

• The 2014 Child Development Supplement (CDS-2014) is designed to support research on children’s cognitive, health, and social development within family, neighborhood, and school context.

• Continuity with CDS I–III (1997–2007). As much as possible, CDS-2014 questionnaires preserved the content of the questionnaires used with the original CDS cohort. The description of individual questionnaire modules below includes information about items or content areas that were omitted, revised, or added during CDS-2014 questionnaire development. Appendix A compares measures in CDS-2014 with CDS I-III.

• Updated and new content. As needed, CDS-2014 questionnaires were revised and updated to include content that reflects the current circumstances of children’s family, neighborhood, and school contexts. Three key changes include:

o New content on children’s access to and use of computers and other electronic devices for learning, socializing, and entertainment. This new content appears in the questionnaires administered to primary caregivers (PCGs) and children as well as in time diaries.

o Updated questions in the adolescent interview to reflect changes in patterns of substance use since 2007.

o New questionnaire content measuring children’s prosocial behavior.

• Collecting age-relevant content. CDS-2014 collected information on all eligible children in PSID households who were born between 1997 and 2013. To produce an economical instrument with content relevant to both analysts and respondents, the universe for many items in the PCG’s interview about each child (PCG-Child) is governed by child age and/or grade in school.

• Minimizing respondent burden. PCGs responded to two questionnaires during the telephone interview: the household interview (PCG-HH) and the child interview (PCG- Child). On average, PCGs completed the PCG-HH questionnaire in 30 minutes and the PCG-Child questionnaire in 45 minutes. The average PCG reported on 1.75 children during the PCG-Child interview. That is, for any individual child, the PCG-Child questionnaire took approximately 25.7 minutes to complete (45/1.75), with content varying depending on child age.

Several strategies were developed to minimize interview length for respondents in larger families. First, some items that were previously asked about each child in the family individually were consolidated as family-level questions in the PCG-HH interview during

CDS-2014. These items are noted in the description of the questionnaire modules below. Second, content on children’s contact with nonresident parents and time in child care was collected using a grid in which relevant information was automatically filled in by the computerized instrument for subsequent children when respondents indicated that the information provided about one child also pertained to any other child in the family (e.g., two children in the family shared the same nonresident biological parent or stayed with the same child care provider). Third, questionnaire content was streamlined to remove redundancy, ambiguity, and inefficiency.