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Assessments

Woodcock-Johnson Revised Tests of Achievement
Children age 3 and older were assessed using the Woodcock-Johnson Revised Tests of Achievement (WJ-R), Form B (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). The younger children (3-5 year olds) were administered two subscales of the WJ-R, the Letter-Word and Applied Problems tests. Older children (6-12 year olds) were administered two additional subtests, the Passage Comprehension and Calculation tests. These scales can be used individually, or in the case of the four subscales, combined to create scores for Broad Reading and Broad Math. When applicable, the Spanish version of the WJ-R (Batería-R, Form A), was used for children whose primary language was Spanish. Table 4 gives a brief description of each subscale, age group that were administered the tests, and reliability of the scale.

Table 4. Description of Woodcock-Johnson-R Subtests

Subscale	Description	Ages tested
Letter-Word Identification	Tests for symbolic learning (matching pictures with words) as well as reading identification skills (identifying letters and words)1.	3-12
Passage Comprehension	Measures comprehension and vocabulary skills using multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank format1.	6-12
Calculation	Measures performance on mathematical calculations (additions, subtraction, etc.) and quantitative ability1.	6-12
Applied Problems	Measures skill in analyzing solving practical problems in mathematics1.	3-12

Note: ¹Woodcock, R.W. & Johnson, M. B. (1989).

The WJ-R test contains nine subtests measuring different aspects of academic achievement. The four chosen for this study cover only the reading and math portion of the test. These tests were chosen due to the ease of administration as well as their brevity. On average, across all age groups, test administration took approximately 40 minutes (Table 5). As shown in the table, the youngest children took the shortest amount of time and the oldest the longest.

Table 5. Length of Time, in Minutes for the Child Questionnaire, by Age of Child and Assessment.

Digit Span
The Memory for Digit Span test from the WISC-III, used in the NLSY-Child Study, is also used to assess children's short-term memory (Wechsler, 1974). In the first part of the test, the child is asked to listen and repeat a sequence of numbers said by the interviewer. In the second part, the child is asked to repeat them in reverse order. The sequence increases in length until the child can no longer repeat the sequence correctly. The PSID Child Development Supplement asked this of children 3 and older.

Self-Esteem
We measure task perception in reading and math and self-esteem of children age 8 and older using a set of scales developed and validated by Jacquelynne Eccles (Eccles, Wigfield, Harold & Blumenfeld, 1993), with an additional subscale on global self-concept created by H.W. Marsh and used in the National Longitudinal Survey of Canadian Children and Youth (SDQ-I) (National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, 1997), and the Marsh Self-Description Questionnaire (Marsh, 1990).

Scales

Primary Caregiver-Child Questionnaire
Physical Health of the Child. Questions about the physical health of each child (A2-A34) were drawn from the redesigned National Health Interview Survey and from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Additional advice was obtained from Lorraine Klerman, University of Birmingham School of Public Health, and Marie McCormick, Harvard School of Public Health. The questions first cover height and weight. They inquire about conditions surrounding birth, such as birth weight, special health care and problems at birth, breast-feeding, general health at birth, health care coverage, receipt of government subsidies during pregnancy. The instrument then asks about experiences following birth, such as hospitalizations, whether the child was ever diagnosed to have any of a set of chronic conditions ranging from asthma to developmental disabilities, visits to a health care professional for illness, injury, or emotional problem, frequency of routine health check-ups, and health care coverage.

The major scales of interest to analysts are general health (A34) and disability (A26). The general health question (A34) is the following: "In general, would you say (child's) health is excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?" The question has a long history in surveys and is the one question that almost all surveys include. The disability series (A26) asks "Does (child) currently have any physical or mental condition that would limit or prevent (his/her) ability to... do usual childhood activities such as play, or participate in games or sports, attend school (preschool or day care) regularly, or do regular school work?" This series was taken from the NLSY-Mother/Child Supplement. Question A21 asks about a series of chronic conditions: "Has your doctor or health professional ever said that (child) had. . ." Frequency distributions of children's health and conditions are included in our first report: Healthy Environments, Healthy Children: Children in Families which can be downloaded from our web site.

HOME Scale. The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment-Short Form from the Caldwell and Bradley HOME Inventory (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984) is used as a measure of the cognitive stimulation and emotional support parents provide to children. The particular items used in the PSID Child Development Supplement were taken directly from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Mother-Child Supplement so that the scales would be as similar as possible (Baker, Keck, Mott & Quinlan, 1993) (Table 6). This scale comprises a large number of items in sections B-F and L of the primary caregiver/child questionnaire, and a few items in the primary caregiver/household questionnaire (Q2A26-Q2A28). With a few minor exceptions, this objective was accomplished. The raw scores from the total scale, HOME1, are included on the primary caregiver-child file. A second scale, HOME2, which excludes the three items involving fathers--how often spends time with the father, how often spends time with the father outdoors, and how often eats a meal with the father--was also constructed and included on the file for those analysts who do not want to include those items.

Aggravation in Parenting. The aggravation in parenting scale (Q1B11a-e) and (Q2A29a-d) was developed by Child Trends, Inc., for the JOBS child outcomes study to measure parenting stress that parents may feel as a result of changes in employment, income, and other factors in their lives. The five items in the primary caregiver/child questionnaire focus on the child while the four items in the primary caregiver/household questionnaire focus on parenting in general. The five items used in the JOBS study are Q1B11b, Q1B11c, B11d, and Q2A29a and Q2A29b. The five-item scale used in the JOBS study has an alpha of .69. The JOBS evaluation found maternal aggravation in parenting to be linked to maternal employment and to higher levels of child behavior problems.

School Enrollment and Expectations. In order to know about the child's school enrollment and attendance, the primary caregiver was asked to report on the child's enrollment in school, when first began kindergarten, grade attending, type of school (private/public), school tuition, attendance, receipt of meals under the school lunch and breakfast programs, whether attended special class or school for gifted students, whether was classified as needing special education, whether ever participated in Head Start, whether ever repeated a grade. These questions (G1-G20) come from the National Household Education Survey, from the NLSY, and from the 1995 PSID. G21 asks parental expectations for the child's completed schooling and also comes from the NLSY and NELS:88.

Behavior Problems Index. The behavior problem scale (G23, G32) was developed by James Peterson and Nicholas Zill to measure the incidence and severity of child behavior problems in a survey setting (Peterson & Zill, 1986). Many of the items are from the Achenbach Behavior Problems Checklist (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1981). Exactly the same set of items used in the NLSY was used in the PSID Child Development Supplement in order to maximize comparability between the two data sets, though the PSID-CDS asked the questions were drawn from of children 3 and older while the NLSY began the questions at age 4. The scale is based on responses by the primary caregiver as to whether a set of 30 problem behaviors is often, sometimes, or never true of the child. Behaviors include having sudden changes in mood or feeling, is fearful or anxious, bullies or is cruel or mean, demands a lot of attention. Behaviors are also divided into two subscales, a measure of externalizing or aggressive behavior and a measure of internalizing, withdrawn or sad behavior. Scores provided are raw scores on the scales. Items G23aa, bb, cc and dd were added by NLSY staff to provide additional measurement for the withdrawn behavior scale. Finally, items G32 a and b are part of the Behavior Problems Scale but are only applicable to school-age children. We created one behavior problems scale by summing the scores on the raw items with direction of scoring reversed, using the 30 items for all children. We also created separate scores for two subscales, internal or withdrawn and external or aggressive. The analyst can either add the two items for school-age children to the 30-item scale, or, as we did in Healthy Environments, Healthy Children: Children in Families use the two items as a separate scale of school problems. Table 6 shows how the 30 items for all children 3 and older map onto the external and internal scales.

Table 6. Behavior Problems Index Factors and Reliabilities

Question	External	Internal	Total
a (He/She)has sudden changes in mood or feeling.	X		X
b (He/She)feels or complains that no one loves him/her.		X	X
c (He/She)is rather high strung and nervous.	X		X
d (He/She)cheats or tells lies.	X		X
e (He/She)is too fearful or anxious.		X	X
f (He/She)argues too much	X		X
g (He/She)has difficulty concentrating, cannot pay attention for long.	X		X
h (He/She)is easily confused, seems to be in a fog.		X	X
i (He/She)bullies or is cruel or mean to others.	X		X
j (He/She)is disobedient.	X		X
k (He/She)does not seem to feel sorry after (he/she)misbehaves.	X		X
l (He/She)has trouble getting along with other children	X	X	X
m (He/She)is impulsive,or acts without thinking.	X		X
n (He/She)feels worthless or inferior.		X	X
o (He/She)is not liked by other children.		X	X
p (He/She)has difficulty getting (his/her) mind off certain thoughts.		X	X
q (He/She)is restless or overly active, cannot sit still	X		X
r (He/She)is stubborn,sullen,or irritable.	X		X
s (He/She)has a very strong temper and loses it easily.	X		X
t (He/She)is unhappy,sad or depressed.		X	X
u (He/She)is withdrawn, does not get involved with others.		X	X
v (He/She)breaks things on purpose or deliberately destroys (his/her)own or another's things.	X		X
w (He/She)clings to adults.	*	*	X
x (He/She)cries too much.	X		X
y (He/She)demands a lot of attention.	X		X
z (He/She)is too dependant on others.		X	X
aa (He/She)feels others are out to get (him/her).		X	X
bb (He/She)hangs around with kids who get into trouble.	*	*	X
cc (He/She)is secretive, keeps things to (himself/herself).		X	X
dd (He/She)worries too much.		X	X
Number of items	16	13	30
Cronbach's alpha	0.86	0.81	0.90
Unweighted N			2646

*Not included in the scale

Positive Behavior Scale. The Positive Behavior Scale (G24) was developed by Denise Polit for use in the New Chance Evaluation (Polit, 1998). The purpose of the scale was to tap the positive aspects of children's lives, including self-esteem, social competence, self-control, obedience/compliance, and persistence. The original scale consisted of 25 items evaluated on a 10-point scale, from not at all like my child to very much like my child. The scale used in the PSID-CDS consists of 10 items that were selected by Child Trends, Inc., for use in the JOBS evaluation. The primary caregiver is asked whether each statement applies to child, on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 means "not at all like my child," and 5 means "totally like my child," and 2,3, and 4 are somewhere in-between. A factor analysis of the original 25-item scale resulted in three dimensions: compliance/self-control, social competence/social sensitivity, and autonomy.

Household Tasks. The set of items about household interaction (G25-a,b,c,f,i,j) was designed to tap maternal and paternal interaction with children in ways that are not dependent on purchased toys or equipment. That is, these are normal activities that could be done in any household. The purpose was to have a scale of parent-child interaction that would not be income-biased. The set of items (G25d,e,g,h,k,m) are items measuring cognitive stimulation. The items about the computer/video games and board, card games, and puzzles may be income-biased.

Participation in Child's Education. This scale (G28) measures parental involvement in the child's school, which includes meeting or conversing with the child's teacher, school principal, or school counselor, attending a school event, attending the parent-teacher's association meeting, and volunteering in the classroom. The items for this scale were taken from various education surveys, including the NELS:88, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, and the National Household Education Survey.

Parental Difficulty in School Involvement. This set of items (G29) was designed in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education, which was interested in finding out the barriers to parental involvement with their children's schools. It is drawn partially from the National Household Education Survey 1996.

Number of School Changes. This question (G30) comes from the NELS:88.

Parent-Child Communication about School. This scale (G31) measures the frequency and nature of communication between parent and child about school. The questions are asked only of parents of children enrolled in school. These questions were modeled after questions in the NELS:88 parent baseline survey, but modified to be appropriate for younger children.

Parental Monitoring. This scale (G33) comes from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Mother-Child file. "Think now about how things are going in general in (child's) life. Please rate each of the following parts of (child's) life as either excellent, good, fair or poor." The NLSY scale has six items including health, friendships, relationship with you (primary caregiver), feelings about himself, prospects for the future, and relationships with brothers, sisters, or other children he lives with." We added two additional items to tap a relationship with a teacher or caregiver and the relationship with the child's other parent.

Parental Warmth. This 6-item scale (G37) was developed by Child Trends, Inc., for use in the JOBS observational study to measure the warmth of the relationship between the child and parent. These measures can also be used with items in the interviewer observation of the home environment in Section L that ask for interviewer report of maternal warmth observed during the visit (L4, L8, L13, L15).

Child Care Arrangements. The series on child care arrangements (Section H) comes from the National Child Care Survey 1990 and other related child care questionnaires. The retrospective history was based both on the National Child Care Survey retrospective history and on the experimental retrospective history asked in the 1989 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (Mott & Baker, 1989).

Conflict with Absent Parent. The purpose of this scale (J28) is to assess the degree of conflict and/or agreement between the parent the child lives with and the absent parent over issues such as where the child lives, how he/she is raised, visits, discipline, etc. This scale was drawn from the National Survey of Families and Households, supplemented by additional items from other scales.

Absent Parent Interaction. The purpose of the series of items in J29 is to obtain information about the frequency and types of activities in which absent parents are involved with their children. This series was drawn from the National Survey of Families and Households and the JOBS evaluation

Absent Parent Expenditures on Child. This scale (J30) supplements the core questions on child support. Even if the absent parent provides child support, he may also provide other things for the child either in cash or in kind. This series obtains information on other contributions absent fathers make to their children. The series was drawn from the National Survey of Families and Household and the JOBS evaluation.

Food Security. Twelve percent of all U.S. households and 17% of all U.S. households with children under 18 years of age experience some level of food insecurity (Hamilton, et al., 1997a). However, we do not know the consequences of food insecurity for those who experience it. Available evidence about the consequences of food insecurity in the U.S. consists of aggregate statistics on health outcomes, such as infant mortality rates for poor groups in comparison to others. Thus, we do not have direct evidence that indicates the effect of food insecurity on child well-being.

With funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we added the food security measurement scale (Section K) developed to measure food security in the United States (Hamilton, et al., 1997a). Information on the use of and validation of the scale are contained in publications by Hamilton and colleagues (Hamilton, et al., 1997b;Price, Hamilton & Cook, 1997).

Primary Caregiver-Household Questionnaire
Neighborhood Measures.Question A1 measures the length of time the respondent has lived in the neighborhood. Question A2 comes from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and measures general neighborhood satisfaction. The majority of the questions are based upon Robert Sampson's research (Sampson, 1991). The question A3 attempts to determine what the respondent thinks his/her neighborhood is (Elliott, Huizenga & Menard, 1989). Question A6 gets at home ownership and race/ethnic composition of the neighborhood, and was drawn from Del Elliot's Denver Youth survey (Elliott, et al., 1996). Questions A4-A6 attempt to determine the ratio of local friendship/acquaintanceship ties relative to the total population. This comes from (Elliott, et al., 1996). Question A7 defines extent of neighborhood anonymity. Social cohesion/capital in the neighborhood is measured in Question A11--How likely is it that a neighbor would do something if...? This set of items also was drawn from (Elliott, et al., 1996). Social capital is measured in A8, in terms of community activities the respondent and partner participated in within the past month. Safety is measured in A12, which was drawn from the Hispanic Neighborhood Study.

Household Security. Neighborhood safety is also measured in A13, regarding security measure on their home--whether they have a security system or bars on the doors and whether they leave doors unlocked. This set of items was created for the PSID-CDS.

Religion. Attendance at religious services and the importance of religion are included in A9 and A10. These questions were drawn from the Detroit Area Study.

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. A14 is the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1986).

Social Support. Our measures of social support, A15-A19, were drawn from the National Survey of Families and Households and from the 1980 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This set of items measures receipt of and provision of assistance to others who are not living with the respondent over the past month. Assistance includes time help, moral and emotional support, and help in an emergency. Information on monetary assistance is contained in the core PSID interview and, for that reason, was not asked here.

Pearlin Self-Efficacy Scale. QA20 is the Pearlin Self-Efficacy Scale (Pearlin, Lieberman, Menaghan & Mullan, 1981).

Child Rearing Values and Rules. Developed by Duane Alwin (Alwin, 1990), these items (A22-A25) appeared in the Detroit Area Study and the General Social Survey.

Parental Modernity Scale. A32 was developed by Schaeffer and Edgerton to assess the modernity or traditionality of parents' values and attitudes about childrearing (Schaefer & Edgerton, 1985).

Parenting Attitudes and Opinions. This set of items (A33-A36) was developed for the PSID-CDS. It supplements the above set questions on parental attitudes and values in child rearing. It is widely believed that some parents push their children to succeed because they believe that hard work results in success, while others do not push their children because they believe that natural ability is most crucial. Still others may believe that success is due to interpersonal relationships. A34 is designed to see what types of compromises or life style adjustments parents have made to make life better for their children and comes from the 1995 follow-up to the National Survey of Adolescent Males (Sonenstein & Pleck, 1995). A35 and A36 attempt to get at the involvement of the respondent's own biological parent and to what extent the respondent models their parenting after that of their own parent.

Gender Roles. The basic set of gender role items (A37a-p,t,u) was taken from the National Survey of Families and Households. It was supplemented with questions on fathering drawn from the Being a Father Scale by Joseph Pleck (A37v-cc) (Pleck, 1997). The majority of the items were drawn from Palkowitz's Role of the Father Questionnaire (Palkowitz, 1984), which taps the belief that THE father role is important in child development. Item 37bb is a new item developed by Pleck which taps the belief that responsibility of male breadwinner role justifies lower involvement with children. Item 37cc, also new, taps belief in equal paternal competence. A37q,r tap attitudes regarding maternal work and nonparental child care. A37s taps attitudes towards spanking.

Parent Disagreement. A40 was drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the National Survey of Families and Households as a measure of extent of agreement between parents on daily activities.

Joint Goals. A41 was designed for the PSID-CDS to gauge the extent to which respondent and partner have joint marital/family goals for the future.

Family Conflict. A42 was drawn from the National Survey of Families and Households (Sweet, Bumpass & Call, 1988) and attempts to examine methods of conflict resolution among family members.

Alcohol Use. The series A44-A49 is a standard set of questions that is used to evaluate whether the respondent has a drinking problem and whether there is any negative influence of any other household member's drinking habits on children.

Economic Strain. This set of items (A53) was drawn from the work of Glen Elder and Rand Conger in measuring experiences of economic or financial stress and strain and practical responses to such financial pressures (Conger & Elder, 1994).

Regular Activity Schedules. This schedule of parental work over the past week (A54) comes from the National Child Care Survey 1990 (Hofferth, Brayfield, Deich & Holcomb, 1991).