Enhancing the PSID Child Development Supplement

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project will enhance the data being derived from two waves of the Child Development Supplement (CDS), a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of children with an oversample of children from low-income families. Initially conducted in 1997 with children aged 0-12, the same children, now aged 5-18, were interviewed 5 years later in 2002-2003. Information on the parents, grandparents, and family members of these children has been collected in 33 waves since 1968 in the nationally representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The focus of this project is to seek funds to improve the data in four ways. First, detailed coding of middle school/high school course enrollment and performance information about the children will be provided, including codes for educational opportunity, academic progress and achievement. Second, links will be created between the CDS data and other data sources that provide information about school characteristics of the children in the CDS sample, such as administrative data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Third, various scales and indices will be created from the raw data and provided on the Internet-based data center, including scales assessing personality, psychological well-being, home environment, and cognitive and academic achievement. Finally, this project will enhance an Internet-based data infrastructure by creating merged data sets for researchers to use to analyze both the CDS data and the parent/family data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). These activities will promote teaching, training, and learning by facilitating the use of highly complex intergenerational data by a broad research community. With these enhancements, the combined data structure of the PSID-CDS will allow analysts from many disciplines Internet access to linked information on children, their parents, their grandparents, and other relatives to take advantage of the rich intergenerational and long-panel dimensions of the PSID.