Errata for 2018 Child/Young Adult Release

Important information: Errata updates in NLS Investigator

The NLS Investigator contains the most recent public release of each NLS cohort. Corrections have been made based on the items listed below (unless otherwise noted). These older, corrected error notices are retained for archival purposes, such as enabling replication of research performed before the errors were discovered. Please contact NLS User Services for additional information. Note: Any Geocode-related errata corrections have been made to the restricted-use data file. See the Accessing Data / Cohort page for more information on utilizing restricted-use data.

Newest Errata

Errata for cross-round child care variables

POSTED 2/10/21

The child-based child care variables that are assigned to the CHILD CARE area of interest (child reference numbers C03564.-C03590.) provide a cumulative updated profile of the child care experiences in the first three years of life for the NLSY79 children. Retrospective questions on child care during the first three years of life for each child were collected in the NLSY79 surveys in 1986, 1988, 1992, and 1994-2014. While child care information was not collected in the 1990 main Youth survey round, it was updated in 1992 or in subsequent rounds through 2014 for mothers not interviewed in 1992. These variables were reviewed for the 1986-2018 public release. The initial variables for whether or not a child was in childcare during a specific year of life (C03564., C03573., and C03582.) were expanded to include information to help users understand why information is unavailable for that year. The revised variables contain the following categories:

1 YES
0 NO
2 Child did not live with mother in this year of life
3 Child adopted out
4 Child deceased
5 Mother of child in dropped military oversample
6 Mother of child in dropped poor white oversample
7 Mother was a non-interview when these questions were asked
8 Mother of child deceased before answering these questions
9 Child reported or mother interviewed after these questions were discontinued

In the process of assigning these new codes, some errors in the original variables were identified and corrected. These corrections affected less than 5% of children.