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NATIONAL SURVEY OF AMERICA’S FAMILIES (NSAF)
Purpose
The National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF) monitors, documents, and explains state policy and family well-being changes during a time when the responsibility and authority for social programs are being transferred from the Federal government to the states.
Agencies/Institutions
NSAF is a part of the Urban Institute’s Assessing the New Federalism project and was developed and conducted in partnership with Child Trends. The first round of the study was funded by 16 foundations. Data collection was administered by Westat.
Research/Survey Design
NSAF is a nonexperimental, cross-sectional study of the noninstitutionalized civilian population under the age of 65 in the United States. The NSAF sampling goal was to acquire data that would not only be representative of the United States as a whole but also be a resource for interstate comparisons. Beyond the general United States, representative samples were obtained for 13 states: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. To thoroughly analyze the families at the lower end of the socioeconomic stratum, the study oversampled low-income families.
Inclusion criteria stipulated that at least one occupant of the household be under the age of 65 and that the number of unrelated household occupants be fewer than nine. Anyone institutionalized in any type of detention or rehabilitation facility, homeless, in temporary housing, in military barracks, or on a ship was excluded. The most knowledgeable adult in the household responded to the survey. Spouses were not contacted for survey information.
NSAF sampling used two separate components. Random-digit dialing (RDD) was used to conduct surveys in households with telephones. The second component targeted households without telephones in order to more accurately represent the disproportionately larger segment of low-income families that are without phone service, as indicated in the 1990 Census. Neighborhoods that had a high percentage of telephone households were excluded from the sampling. Interviewers screened neighborhood blocks for eligible non-telephone households.
In the RDD portion of the sampling, households were screened for whether they included children under the age of 18 and whether their previous year’s household income was greater than 200% of the poverty line. Households without children under 18 or with an income greater than 200% of the poverty threshold were subsampled to reduce the cost of sampling. To relieve intrahousehold respondent burden, one or two children per family (one child under the age of 6 and one child between the ages of 6 and 17) were randomly designated focal children if multiple children in a family fell into these categories.
Date(s)/Periodicity
Three waves of data have been collected: 1997, 1999, and 2003.
Population/Sample
The NSAF is a representative survey of the noninstitutionalized civilian population under age 65 in the nation as a whole and in 13 specific states: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. The combined population of these states makes up more than one-half of the U.S. population. Study states represent a broad range of characteristics, such as fiscal policy, approaches to government, and child well-being indicators. They also vary in geographic location, size, and dominant political tradition.
In 1997, 50,355 phone and in-person interviews were done in 45,996 households. Interviews were conducted in 42,973 telephone households and in 1,488 nontelephone households (Dean Brick et al., 1999). Information was obtained for children under the age of 17. The national NSAF response rates for adults with at least one child and other sampled adults were 65.4% and 61.7%, respectively. The sample of focal children was 49% female; 34% of the children were under age 6 and 34% were between the ages of 6 and 11. The remaining children were adolescents ages 12 to 17. White children made up 66% of the sample. Black and Hispanic children made up 15% and 14% of the sample, respectively. According to weighted data, 43% of the children lived in households with incomes 200% below poverty level (Ehrle & Moore, 1999).
The sample was weighted to be representative of the country as a whole and the specific state in which the respondent lived.
“The overall response rate for children in the [1997] NSAF was 65.4 percent nationally (77.8 percent for the screening interview, multiplied by 84.1 percent for the extended interview). The extended interview completion rate varied by study area from 78.1 percent to 89.3 percent. For adults, ... the corresponding overall response rate was 61.7 percent nationally. The overall adult screener completion rate was 76.6 percent. The extended completion rate was 79.9 percent nationally, ranging from 73.5 percent to 85.7 percent. The overall response rate, calculated on this basis, was about 63 percent” (Kenny, Scheuren, & Wang, 1999, p. 6-5). Over the entire 1997 NSAF, the response rate was 70 percent.
Content Covered
The survey contains indicators to study change in child well-being over time (e.g., health status, behavior, school engagement, suspension, expulsion, and accidents and injuries), as well as measures for family well-being, employment, earnings and income, educational attainment, participation in training activities, economic hardship, family structure, housing arrangements and cost, health insurance coverage, access to and use of health services, health status, psychological well-being, participation in religious and volunteer activities, knowledge about availability of social services, and attitudes about work, welfare, health care, and childbearing.
Availability of Data for Public Use
NSAF data can be downloaded from the Assessing the New Federalism section of the Urban Institute website at www.urban.org/anf; registration is required.
Assessing the New Federalism
National Survey of America’s Families
Urban Institute
2100 M St NW
Washington, DC 20037
nsaf@ui.urban.org
Reference List for Users’ Guide, Codebooks, Methodology Report(s)
Dean Brick, P., Kenney, G., McCullough-Harlin, R., Rajan, S., Scheuren, F., Wang, K., Brick, J. M., & Cunningham, P. (1999). Methodology report no. 1: National Survey of America’s Families: Survey methods and data reliability. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Retrieved July 1, 2003, from http://www.urban.org/content/Research/NewFederalism/NSAF/Methodology/1997MethodologySeries/1997.htm
Ehrle, J., & Moore, K. (1999). Methodology report no. 6: Benchmarking child and family well-being measures in the NSAF. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Retrieved July 1, 2003, from http://www.urban.org/content/Research/NewFederalism/NSAF/Methodology/1997MethodologySeries/1997.htm
Kenney, G., Scheuren, F., & Wang, K. (1999). 1997 NSAF survey methods and data reliability: Report no. 1. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
Urban Institute. (2001a). Assessing the new federalism. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved July 1, 2003, from http://www.urban.org/Content/Research/NewFederalism/AboutANF/AboutANF.htm
Urban Institute. (2001b).National Survey of America’s Families: 1997 snapshots of America’s families. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved July 1, 2003, from http://www.urban.org/content/Research/NewFederalism/NSAF/Snapshots/1997Results/Foreword/Fore.htm
Urban Institute. (2001c). National Survey of America’s Families: Overview. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved July 1, 2003, from http://www.urban.org/Content/Research/NewFederalism/NSAF/Overview/NSAFOverview.htm
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