Attachment 5 - Changes from R18 to R19

Attachment 5-- Changes to the NLSY97 Questionnaire from Rounds 18 to 19

In Round 19, for the second time, the majority of NLSY97 interviews will be conducted by telephone. Adapting the NLSY97 instrument for the change in mode was the focus of changes made for Round 18 questionnaires. Despite our best efforts, the questionnaire in Round 18 was longer than anticipated. We propose further cuts to Round 19 in order to bring the length of the survey down.

In addition, we have added a few items on work expectations, health, and device ownership that we believe will let researchers study labor market outcomes such as non-work and job search over the lifecycle.

Attachment 5 details the changes made to the questionnaire by section.

Household Information

Modifications have been made to streamline this section and make administration time shorter and the section less burdensome.

1. Streamline the material collected in the household roster for many household members.

1. Collect marital status in HH roster only for those listed as partners.

2. Collect religion and highest grade only for those household members listed as spouses and partners.

2. Ask updated information on parents’ marital status and employment status only every ten years along with health at 38/39. This is change from the past several rounds where this information was updated for the entire sample in each round. In round 19, only the oldest two birth cohorts 1980 and 1981 will answer these questions about their parents.

3. Drop items on parent background and sibling updates. These items have been in the questions for three rounds, with respondents only answering the first time they encountered them. Items on parent background cover whether the parent served in the military, was incarcerated, and owned a business. Items on siblings asked number of siblings and age of oldest sibling.

4. Drop three locating items (YHHI-LOC-600, YHHI-LOC-700-000001, YHHI-LOC-000003) which ask whether the phone number is listed in the respondent’s name and if not, under whose name the telephone number is listed. These items have become increasingly irrelevant for this age group as land lines have declined and cell phones have increased.

5. Questions on religion and religiosity will be asked only of those respondents who were not interviewed in R18. These items were collected in Round 18. We plan to ask them again in Round 20 for those respondents not interviewed in Round 18 and Round 19.

6. Drop series of items on moving out/moving back in with parents (YHHI-56010 to YHHI-56500). These items have been asked since Round 6 (when respondents were ages 18 to 23) and have been asked in every round since then. They were designed to collect the first time the respondent lived on his or her own (for example, not in parents’ household) and whether the respondent moved back in parents or other caretakers, as well as the dates of these transitions.

Schooling

Changes to this section are designed to make collecting information about college attendance less burdensome since those for whom we would collect this information are either attending college beyond traditional ages or have missed several interviews.

1. We propose to drop several item from the loops on college attendance. These loops collect information by college term. We will retain the college term loop structure.

The items dropped are listed here:

1. Whether completed term: YSCH-NEW1

2. Whether withdrew from term: YSCH-NEW2

3. Reason withdrew from term: YSCH-NEW3

4. Credits taken in that term: YSCH-20500

5. Number of hours classes met during that term: YSCH-21000

6. Amounts of financing during that term, by source of financing: YSCH-24600 to YSCH-24900, YSCH-25200 to YSCH-26500

2. We propose to add one question to collect how much debt accumulated at a college and for those who don’t know or refuse the initial question, a follow-up item that asks for a bracketed amount will be asked. This question will be asked at the college level instead of the term level. We see it as a replacement for the term-level information. The new item reads “How much debt have you accumulated while attending at [school name([college loop])]?”

Employment

1. Classification of Jobs. In the employment section jobs are classified as regular, self-employed, or non-traditional. Over time we have refined the method for classifying jobs and no longer use all items collected to assign job type. We propose to drop the unused items.

1. Drop item on whether respondent files SE tax form: YEMP-9899WEH and YEMP-9890O.

2. Drop items on ownership/control of self-employed business: YEMP-9899WED, YEMP-9899WEE, YEMP-9899WEF, YEMP-9899WEG, YEMP-9890K, YEMP-9890L, YEMP-9890M, and YEMP-9890N.

3. Drop item on whether respondent uses own equipment and tools at work: YEMP-9899WEW and YEMP-9890W.

4. Drop item on whether respondent primarily works from home, but otherwise regular employee: YEMP-9899WEX and YEMP-9890X.

2. We propose to drop the series of questions on wage bargaining at the start of a job. These items have been asked were asked in Rounds 17 and 18 of the NLSY97. The dropped items are YEMP-WAGEBARGD-CHECK1 through YEMP-WAGEBARGD-4, YEMP-WAGEBARGA-CHECK1 through YEMP-WAGEBARGA-4, YEMP-WAGEBARGB-CHECK1 through YEMP-WAGEBARGB-4, and YEMP-WAGEBARGC-CHECK1 through YEMP-WAGEBARGC-4.

3. In the items that ask whether the employer makes certain fringe benefits available to the respondent, we propose to drop fringe benefits that occur with low frequency (life insurance, dental benefits, and paid maternity or paternity leave) and to add other fringe benefits (paid and unpaid sick and vacation/personal leave) to YEMP-100300 and YEMP-101110.

4. We propose to drop questions on how much paid leave one receives at a job: YEMP-100400A, YEMP-101111, YEMP-101111A, YEMP-101112. We will not get the incidence of this leave in YEMP-100300 and YEMP-101110 as described above.

5. We propose to drop items that ask whether internet was used in job search methods and if so, whether the respondent was required to use the internet. The items we propose to drop are YEMP-101300C and YEMP-101300D, YEMP-107600BC, YEMP-107600D, YEMP-109400B, and YEMP-109400C.

6. We propose to add 2 questions on expectations of working in the future.

1. A year from now, what is the percent chance that you will be working for pay more than 20 hours per week?

2. Five years from now, what is the percent chance that you will be working for pay more than 20 hours per week?

These questions were asked previously in Round 1 and Round 4 of the NLSY97. Jesse Rothstein (UC-Berkley) organized two conference calls with a number of economists and sociologists to discuss how the NLSY97 might inform research on prime-age workers who are out of the labor force. Because NLSY97 collects employment history, household structure, and sources of income, it is well-situated to study non-workers. (For instance, see Rothstein, Donna S. (2018) “Male Prime-age Nonworkers: Evidence from the NLSY97.”) The social scientists with whom we consulted thought that adding questions about whether the non-workers expect to work again would be useful in understanding their current decisions.

Training

No changes.

Marriage

No changes.

Fertility

Changes to this section are proposed in order to shorten the section and eliminate some sensitive questions.

1. We propose to drop the question on coital frequency: YFER-SAQ2-312A.

2. We propose to drop the items that indicate how many weeks pregnant a woman is at the date of the interview: YFER-SAQ2-316 to YFER-SAQ2-321.

3. We propose to drop items that collect the characteristics of the other parent at the time respondent became pregnant: YFER-11500 to YFER-9020 and YFER-12200 to YFER-12430. If the respondent is married to or cohabitates with the “other parent” we will have already collected his or her characteristics earlier in the survey.

Child Care

No changes.

Income

1. Change year reference: Adjust year references from 2015 to 2017 and from 2016 to 2018.

2. We propose to drop the question on whether the respondent obtained payday loans in the last 12 months. (YINC-7960)

3. We propose to drop the question on whether the respondent obtained cash advances in the last 12 months. (YINC-7950)

4. We propose to add questions on whether the respondent filed taxes, and if so, his filing status and the method by which the taxes were filed. The addition of these questions will help users of the data ascertain whether R received the Earned Income Tax Credit. The proposed items are listed here.

Did you [or] [Spouse/partner's name] file a federal income tax return in 2018?

1. Yes

0. No

What was your filing status on your [{taxyear~X}] federal income tax return?

1. A single taxpayer

2. Married, filing a joint return

3. Married, filing separate

4. Unmarried head of household

5. Qualifying widow(er) with dependent child

What method did you use to prepare your 2018 tax return?

0. Self-prepared manually

1. Tax software

2. Friend or relative

3. Professional tax preparer

5. Replace item that asks about receipt of income from other sources (YINC-7600) with two items that split the sources into government assistance (YINC-7601) and other (YINC-7602). The two replacement questions are listed below.

YINC-7601

During 2018 did [you/you or your spouse/you or your partner] receive income from government programs such as TANF, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security Disability (SSDI), veterans or GI benefits or other government programs?

YINC-7602

During 2018 did [you/you or your spouse/you or your partner] receive income from any other sources, such as, pension or retirement income including survivor's benefits, alimony, payments from life insurance policies or any other regular or periodic source of income not from a government source?

Assets

1. Assets at age 30: Questions on the value of assets and debts at age 30 will no longer be asked, as respondents have aged out. Questions on wealth have been collected at five-year age increments the first-time the respondent is a given age or older (but has not yet reached the next age at which assets information is collected).

2. Assets at age 35: Because respondents will turn ages 35 to 39 in 2019 when fielding of Round 19 begins, questions collecting assets at age 35 (or higher) will be collected. All those born in 1983 and 1984 will go through the Assets 35 module in Round 19. Those who were born in 1980 through 1982 who have not completed Assets 35 will be eligible for the Assets 35 section in Round 19.

Program Participation

No changes.

Self-Administered

1. We propose to drop questions on criminal activity, YSAQF-389 through YSAQF-438. Beginning in Round 18 with the move to telephone interviewing these questions were no longer self-administered for the majority of the respondents. When interviewer-administered, past work shows there is substantial under-reporting of criminal activity. (See Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn. (2003) Chapter 3: Comparison of Self-Report and Official Data for Measuring Crime in Measurement Problems in Criminal Justice: Workshop Summary. National Research Council.

2. Because of the ages of the respondents in Round 19 (ages 35 to 39 at the start of the round), we propose to drop questions about whether the respondent went to juvenile court. (YSAQF-400C1, YSAQF-443C1, YSAQF-467A, YSAQ-467N)

Health

1. We propose to drop questions on time use: time spent in computer use (In a typical week, how many hours do you use a computer?), time spent watching television (In a typical week, how many hours do you spend watching television?), and time spent in sleep (On a typical weeknight, how many hours of sleep do you usually get?).

2. We propose to drop two questions on how often the respondent drinks alcohol and drives or rides as a passenger with someone who has been drinking.

3. We propose to add two questions on whether and how frequently the respondent has suffered from chronic pain in the last 30 days. The item wording matches that of the National Health Interview Survey with the exception of the timeframe; we propose to ask about pain in the last 30 days whereas the NHIS asks about pain in the last 3 months. The wording we propose matches that in Round 28 of the NLSY79, hence permitting cross-cohort analysis. In addition, the timeframe of “past 30 days” matches the timeframe in the substance use questions in NLSY97; thus permitting analysis of the relationship between pain and substance use. The information from these questions would permit the study of the relationship between pain and employment, which has been explored in cross-sectional data, but may have important implications for work over the life-cycle. See, for instance, Kruger (2017) https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1_krueger.pdf.

4. We propose to add four question on use of painkillers to the Round19 health section. These questions are included in Round 28 of the NLSY79. The questions are listed below.

PK_1 Did you take any pain medication in the past 30 days, such as Aspirin, Ibuprofen or prescription pain medication?

Yes

No (skip PK_2, PK_3, and PK_4)

PK_2 Did you take a prescription medication?

Yes

No

PK_3 Did you take one you can buy over-the-counter without a prescription?

Yes

No

PK_4 In the past 30 days, did you use prescribed painkillers in any way the doctor did not direct you to use them, such as for pain the doctor did not prescribe them for, in greater quantities or for longer than the doctor prescribed, or without a prescription?

Yes

No

5. Health 38/39: We propose to add a health module that will assess aspects of health at ages 38 and 39. In Round 19, the two oldest birth years of the NLSY97 cohort, birth years 1980 and 1981 would go through this section. The younger birth cohorts would be askes these questions in subsequent rounds when they are ages 38 and 39. The proposed section asks the following questions.

   1. We propose to ask Center for Epidemiological Depression Scale (CESD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder Screener questions (GAD-7) in Round 19. The CESD would be asked of all respondents in round 19, but as part of the Health 38/39 series in subsequent rounds. The GAD-7 would be asked of respondents born in years 1980 and 1981 in Round 19. Both the CESD and GAD-7 are well-known psychological scales. They have been asked in the NLSY79 as well as numerous other surveys. Understanding mental health is important to understanding work outcomes.

2. There are two questions about health expectations. Both of these questions have been asked in the NLSY79 in Round 26 and 28. The questions are listed below.

   1. What do you think the chances are that your health will limit your work activity during the next 10 years?

   2. What do you think the chances are that you will live to be 75 or more?

3. There are three questions on sleep, covering how much sleep the respondent gets on week or work nights, on weekends or non-work nights, and whether the respondent has sleep problems. These items have been asked in the NLSY79.

4. There is an open-ended question that asks whether there is anything else about the respondent’s health that she wants to tell the survey. This question has also been asked in the NLSY79 in past rounds.

End of Interview

1. We propose to drop the Grit scale (YEND-SAQ-GRIT_1 through YEND-SAQ-GRIT_8). This scale was asked in Round 16, and then in Rounds 17 and 18 of those who had not yet answered it.

2. We propose to not ask questions about parental support in Round 19, YEND-SAQ-600 through YEND-SAQ-315A. These questions were asked in Rounds 1 through 7 of the NLSY97 and have since been asked periodically in Rounds 10, 15, and 18.

3. We propose to add three questions on device ownership to Round 19. These questions have been asked in Pew surveys since 2011. Such items measure the “digital divide” and permit researchers to study the relationships between computer ownership, skills in the labor market, job search, and labor market success over time. The questions proposed are listed below.

1. Do you have a cellphone, or not?

2. Some cellphones are called “smartphones” because of certain features they have. Is your cellphone a smartphone, such as an iPhone, Android, Blackberry, or Windows phone, or are you not sure?

3. Please tell me if you happen to have each of the following types of computers, or not. Do you have …

1. A tablet computer like an iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus, or Kindle Fire.

2. A desktop or laptop computer