Vol. 38, No. 18

2-5-2008
By: Jeff Grabmeier

Big social science

Ohio State runs national surveys that help capture America's story

In a nondescript office building near Ackerman and Kenny roads, a database holds the intimate details to the lives of nearly 50,000 Americans.

Want to know the effect of breastfeeding on intelligence in children? Or if working long hours boosts a person’s risk of injuries and illness? Or if husbands and wives view their financial status differently?

Researchers have investigated these and many other questions using the data contained within the National Longitudinal Surveys, developed and maintained at Ohio State University.

While the NLS isn’t well known among most people — even at Ohio State — it is one of the largest and most influential tools available to social scientists, said Randall Olsen, director of Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research, which administers the NLS.

“This is big science,” Olsen said. “Physicists have their superconducting supercolliders. Social scientists have the NLS.”

World-wide asset
The impact of the NLS over the past 40 years has been enormous. While it is hard to give an exact count, “the number of journal articles, dissertations, theses and books based on the NLS is easily in the thousands,” said Frank Mott, a research scientist at CHRR and one of the leaders of the NLS.

As a result, nearly every social scientist in the world is familiar with what goes on at the center.

“This is something that puts Ohio State on the map,” said Elizabeth Cooksey, associate professor of sociology at Ohio State and another NLS leader. “A lot of researchers all over the world know of OSU because they know of the NLS.”

So what exactly are the National Longitudinal Surveys? They are a set of seven separate long-term surveys sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. These surveys have involved interviews with randomly selected Americans over a number of years and concern a variety of significant life events revolving around work, family, children, health and finances, among other topics.

For most of the surveys, Ohio State’s CHRR did the design work, prepared the files and now houses the data in a computer protected by a team of software and networking engineers. The National Opinion Research Center in Chicago does the data collection in the field and has helped design one of the surveys.

Growing impact
The NLS started from 1966 to 1968 when four separate “cohorts” — or groups of people — were interviewed for the first time. Those surveys, which each included about 5,000 people, were called the Older Men, Mature Women, Young Men and Young Women surveys. The members of those cohorts were interviewed between 13 and 22 times each, with the final interviews coming between 1981 and 2003.

But the most influential of the surveys may be the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and its companion, the NLSY ’79 Child and Young Adult survey.
The ’79 survey involves interviews with more than 12,000 people who were 14 to 22 years old when it began. They were interviewed every year through 1994, and every two years since. The 23rd survey is beginning this year.

The NLSY ’79 Child and Youth cohort is made up of more than 11,000 children (as of 2006) born to women who participate in the NLSY ’79.

Taken together, these two surveys give researchers the rare ability to see how individual and family characteristics in mothers affect the well-being of their children through time.

‘Powerful data’
Unlike cross-sectional surveys, which look at people at just one point in time, the long-term nature of the NLS allows researchers to more accurately see how past events in a person’s life affect their future ­— and their children’s future.

“We’re in the position to compare these linkages between generations, and to see how health, attitudes and well-being are passed from mothers to children. It’s very powerful data, and researchers can do a lot with it,” Mott said.

In many studies comparing children and their parents, the parents are asked to recall events from years ago ­— events that may be forgotten or unintentionally reinvented. That’s not a problem with the NLSY.

“We’re not asking mothers what they did when they were 16 years old — we know what they were doing because they told us back then. That’s really unique,” Cooksey said.

As the Child and Young Adult cohort moves into middle age, researchers will get another bonus — seeing what happens when adult children have to start caring for their aging parents who participate in the NLSY ’79.

“We’re going to have some interesting findings when researchers start looking at the flip side of those intergenerational connections, when children start supporting their parents,” Olsen said.

Into the future
While most of the NLS has been funded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Child and Young Adult surveys have been funded primarily by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with Cooksey and Mott as the principal investigators. The researchers recently received a $4.7 million grant from NICHD to continue those surveys through 2011.

The newest NLS project is the Survey of Youth 1997, which follows nearly 9,000 Americans who were ages 12 to 17 when first interviewed in 1997.

Eleven rounds of interviews have been completed, with a focus on the youths’ transition from school to the labor market and into adulthood.

Like other NLS surveys, the participants are asked a number of questions on education, health, family characteristics and work experience, as well as other topics.

“One of the lessons of the NLSY ’79 was how important early adolescent experiences are in shaping a person’s life,” Olsen said. “So we started the NLSY ’97 cohort even younger than the ’79 cohort.”

In addition to providing data for researchers worldwide, the NLS has been a way to help launch the careers of many students here at Ohio State, and provide research and work opportunities for faculty and staff, Olsen said. At any one time, about 80 faculty, staff and students work at CHRR, where the NLS is the major project.

Olsen said the NLS will continue to provide a wealth of information to social scientists for years to come.

“You can make a pretty good case that the NLS tells a substantial story of America for the past forty-plus years,” he said. “It will be interesting to see what new studies come out of this.”

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