R22 Advance Letter

Dear NLSY97 respondent,
Welcome to the 22nd round of the NLSY97!
The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) is dedicated to its mission: to
provide information on the complex relationships between people’s labor
market activities and other experiences such as education, health, family
formation, and economic decision-making throughout their lives. We know
that this information is vital to our many data users.
Most U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) surveys are cross sectional,
providing a “snapshot” at one point in time. For example, the Current
Population Survey (CPS) measures the unemployment rate. From the CPS, we
know the percentage of the labor force that is without a job in a given month.
In comparison, a longitudinal survey like the NLSY97 repeatedly interviews
the same sample members — You! — to collect information on activities in
your lives. This enables researchers to analyze transitions over time — like
moves to a new job, stints spent out of the labor force, and changes to your
work schedule — all while having information on family, health, education,
and many other topics that may affect your labor market choices.
To get a sense of the ways this data is used, we encourage you to visit
our NLS bibliography page: www.nlsinfo.org/bibliography-start. Here
you will find studies that look at employment and earnings in relationship
to a myriad of other life events. In fact, over 1,500 journal articles, Ph.D.
dissertations, and book chapters have been written using the NLSY97.
These studies affect public policies in many ways. Policymakers often
use them directly in planning programs, and news organizations often
report their main findings to the general public. And as the NLSY97 is one
of BLS’s family of surveys, we also invite you to browse the BLS website for
information about labor market survey topics of interest: www.bls.gov.
Thank you for being the most important part of the NLSY97. We look
forward to talking to you soon!
Sincerely,

Keenan Dworak-Fisher

Director, National Longitudinal Surveys
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Feel free to reach out
Call: 877.504.1086
Text with your full name to: 312.835.1905
Email: [email protected]
Visit: www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy97.htm

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WHY IS THIS STUDY IMPORTANT?

Thanks to your help, policymakers and researchers will have a better understanding of the work
experiences, family characteristics, health, financial status, and other important information about
the lives of people in your generation. This is a voluntary study, and there are no penalties for not
participating or not answering all the questions. However, missing responses make it more difficult to
understand the issues that concern people in your community and across the country. Your answers
represent the experiences of hundreds of other people your age. We hope we can count on your
participation again this time.

WHO AUTHORIZES THIS STUDY?

The sponsor of the study is the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. The study is
authorized under Title 29, Section 2, of the United States Code. The CHRR at The Ohio State University
and NORC at the University of Chicago conduct this study under a contract with the Department of
Labor. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved the questionnaire and has
assigned 1220-0157 as the study’s control number. This control number expires on X/XX/28. Without
OMB approval and this number, we would not be able to conduct this study.

HOW MUCH TIME WILL THE INTERVIEW TAKE?

Based on preliminary tests, we expect the average interview to take about 71 minutes. Your interview
may be somewhat shorter or longer depending on your circumstances. If you have any comments
regarding this study or recommendations for reducing its length, send them to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, National Longitudinal Surveys, at [email protected].

WHO SEES MY ANSWERS?

We want to reassure you that your confidentiality is protected by law. In accordance with the
Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act, the Privacy Act, and other applicable
Federal laws, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, its employees and agents, will, to the full extent permitted
by law, use the information you provide for statistical purposes only, will hold your responses in
confidence, and will not disclose them in identifiable form without your informed consent. All the
employees who work on the survey at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and its contractors must sign a
document agreeing to protect the confidentiality of your data. In fact, only a few people have access to
information about your identity because they need that information to carry out their job duties.
Some of your answers will be made available to researchers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other
government agencies, universities, and private research organizations through publicly available
data files. These publicly available files contain no personal identifiers, such as names, addresses,
Social Security numbers, and places of work, and exclude any information about the states, counties,
metropolitan areas, and other, more detailed geographic locations in which survey participants live,
making it much more difficult to figure out the identities of participants. Some researchers are granted
special access to data files that include geographic information, but only after those researchers go
through a thorough application process at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those authorized researchers
must sign a written agreement making them official agents of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and
requiring them to protect the confidentiality of survey participants. Those researchers are never
provided with the personal identities of participants. The National Archives and Records Administration
and the General Services Administration may receive copies of survey data and materials because
those agencies are responsible for storing the Nation’s historical documents.

WHERE CAN I FIND MORE INFORMATION?
To learn more about the survey, visit: www.bls.gov/nls. To search for articles, reports, and other research
based on the National Longitudinal Surveys, visit: www.nlsinfo.org/bibliography-start.

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