Qualitative Interviews with Families Reporting No Work or Government Cash Assistance in the National Survey of America's Families

Assessing the New Federalism Discussion Paper No. 03-01

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

About the Series

Assessing the New Federalism is a multiyear Urban Institute project designed to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states. It focuses primarily on health care, income security, employment and training programs, and social services. Researchers monitor program changes and fiscal developments. Alan Weil is the project director. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies changes in family well-being. The project provides timely, nonpartisan information to inform public debate and to help state and local decisionmakers carry out their new responsibilities more effectively.

Key components of the project include a household survey, studies of policies in 13 states, and a database with information on all states and the District of Columbia. Publications and database are available free of charge on the Urban Institute's web site: http://www.urban.org. This paper is one in a series of discussion papers analyzing information from these and other sources.

The Assessing the New Federalism project is currently supported by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The Ford Foundation.

Contents

Abstract

I. Introduction

II. Background

III. The Sample

IV. The Interview Process

V. Characteristics of the Sample

VI. Summary and Implications

References

Tables

Appendix A

I. Introduction

This paper describes the results of a qualitative telephone survey of 169 families with children identified in the 2002 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) as having no current employment or cash government assistance and income below one-half of the poverty level in the prior year. The study primarily was designed to understand the status of these families. While household surveys have traditionally identified a small number of families that report very little or no means of financial support, recent welfare reforms that eliminated the entitlement to cash assistance raise concerns that more families may be living without cash government assistance even when they have no earnings. It is therefore essential to understand the extent to which these survey reports are accurate, how long this type of income deprivation lasts, and how families cope without cash assistance or earnings. Secondary study goals included testing the willingness of families to participate in such a study, assessing the effectiveness of qualitative telephone interviews, and demonstrating the value of combining qualitative follow-up data with quantitative data collected in a traditional household survey.

This paper focuses on the study methods, interviewee cooperation, and comparisons between responses provided in the qualitative interviews and the NSAF. A companion paper, "Families Coping Without Earnings or Government Cash Assistance," (Zedlewski et al. 2003) describes insights gained about how extremely poor families get by without regular cash income.

The paper begins with a background describing previous studies that have attempted to understand the circumstances of families reporting little or no income in household surveys. The second section defines the target sample and the methods used to identify it in the NSAF. We subsequently describe the interview process, including procedures for contacting the sample selected for follow-up and for conducting the qualitative interviews. This section also describes the protocol, completion rates, and data summarization procedures. The next section of the paper describes the current income status of respondents and compares the qualitative results with those in the NSAF. The paper concludes with a summary and discussion of implications for future surveys of family income.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Katherin Ross Phillips for her help with the project's design, and Jennifer Holland, Robin Koralek, Molly Whitehead, Sandy Padilla, and Tracy Von Ins for their help with the data collection. This study was funded through support from the Smith Richardson and the Packard Foundations.

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