NSAF Public Use File User's Guide

Natalie Abi-Habib, Adam Safir, Timothy Triplett

Report No. 11 in the 2002 NSAF Methodology Series

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.

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

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1.1 Introduction

The User's Guide presents basic information on the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) public use data. The goal of this report is to provide users with enough information on the survey itself and data files to be able to use the data, although other reports in the Methodology series should be consulted for more detailed information. The NSAF is part of Assessing the New Federalism (ANF),¹ a multiyear Urban Institute research project to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, job training, and social services. In collaboration with Child Trends, researchers from the Urban Institute monitor program changes and fiscal developments, along with changes in the well-being of children and families. Data collection for the NSAF was carried out in 1997, 1999, and 2002 by Westat.

This introductory chapter gives an overview of the survey, including descriptions of the sample design and data collection procedures. Chapter 2 provides information on the content and structure of NSAF public use files. Chapter 3 gives instructions and examples on how to use NSAF weights to obtain survey estimates. Chapter 4 describes procedures for calculating variances and standard errors of survey estimates.

1.2 About the Survey

The Urban Institute began the ANF project during the 1996 period of devolution of fiscal responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states. The project goals are to provide policymakers, state administrators, and advocates the information they need to make better decisions and to help the nation determine the consequences of devolution.

The project is premised on the notion that better information yields better policies. With increased state-level authority, state data become increasingly more important; yet such data are currently very limited. Of course, devolution should not be "evaluated" with a pronouncement of success or failure at the end, but should be monitored, with continuous input into the policy and implementation process. This implies that a new relationship between research and practice is necessary and a long-term effort needed.

The NSAF provides the ANF project data needed for a comprehensive look at the well-being of adults and children and reveals striking differences among the 13 focal states. The survey provides quantitative measures of the quality of life in America. One of the survey's defining features is the breadth of topics it covers:

• Household composition and demographics
• Health status, insurance, access, utilization, and confidence in getting care
• Employment, earnings, income, poverty status, economic hardship, and child support receipt and payments
• Welfare, Food Stamps, and other program participation
• Child care arrangements and social service needs
• Child and family well-being measures

While the focus of the survey is at the state level, the scope is national—with a primary emphasis on low-income families with children. The focus of ANF analysis is extensive and varied, with wide dissemination a major component. The project has employed four major data sources:

1) the compilation and integration of existing state databases;
2) in-depth, state-specific baseline case studies with follow-up monitoring;
3) special surveys of states; and
4) our topic here, the National Survey of America's Families.

The unfolding New Federalism can be viewed as 51 "natural experiments." Ideally, the effects of devolution should be examined by conducting intensive case studies and tracking changes in well-being in all states, as well as by controlling for substate variation in program implementation. However, this would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, the Urban Institute decided to focus on just 13 states, shown in figure 1. These study areas were selected to vary in terms of their size, geographic location, fiscal capacity, citizens' needs, and traditions of providing government services.

While the NSAF survey was conducted, intensive case studies were also conducted in the 13 states to obtain an in-depth understanding of each state's responses to the New Federalism. Monitoring continues as state circumstances change.

NSAF data from all rounds are used to explore linkages between state policy and child and family well-being. The data were collected with the purpose of allowing analysts at the Urban Institute and Child Trends to look at changes over time, and make comparisons across states at a point in time, within a state over time, and across states over time.

Notes from this section

1 Assessing the New Federalism is funded by a consortium of private foundations including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and others.

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

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