NYVCES & ATUS Coordination

Attachment D

Coordination of the National Youth Volunteering and Civic Engagement Survey (NYVCES) and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS)

NYVCES: Sample cases eligible for the NYVCES are selected from Month-in-Sample (MIS) 8 cases from the September, October, November, and December 2006 and 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS). From these cases, NYVCES selects one person from housing units that have children who were born between September 1, 1989 and August 31, 1996 or roughly 12 to 18 years of age at the time of the interview.

From the selection criteria developed for the NYVCES, the total eligible cases meeting our selection criteria (households with sample persons between the ages of 12 and 18, inclusive; valid phone number and mailing address; nonmover, and valid name) we had about 8000 cases eligible. With the exception of a small control group (460), a $20 incentive is offered to all sample persons choosing to participate and complete the survey.

ATUS: Each month the ATUS selects households from the previous month’s CPS MIS-8 cases. ATUS samples households with children at a higher rate than those without children. From these households, ATUS selects one person 15 years of age or older for interviewing. ATUS offers a $40 incentive to cases without valid phone numbers by sending a debit card valued at $40 to the respondent as part of the advance letter. This letter requests the sample person to call in and complete the survey. At completion, the sample person is provided the debit card PIN.

Coordination: Cases selected for the NYVCES also had an opportunity for selection into the ATUS. There are 3,783 households selected for the NYVCES that were also selected for the ATUS. Of these 3,783 households there were 516 respondents who were selected for both surveys.

Although there is significant overlap in the households sampled for these two surveys, there are several mitigating circumstances that led us to decide not to remove the selected ATUS sample from inclusion in the NYVCES selection:

• Of the 516 sample persons selected for both surveys, only about 55% were actually interviewed in the ATUS.

• The time interval between contacts for these two surveys ranges from 6 months to 22 months (the interval between the MIS 8 CPS interview and the ATUS contact is less than 2 months).

• We are offering incentives to a large proportion of the NYVCES sample: none of the cases that overlapped with the ATUS sample received an incentive for that survey since only households with phone numbers were eligible for the NYVCES.

• The overlap is limited just to children who are now between the ages of 16 and 18, inclusively.

• Finally, removing the overlap would result in an inadequate sample for the NYVCES.