The NLSY79 Child surveys contain a wide range of detailed assessment information about the children of female respondents. Beginning in 1986, a battery of child cognitive, socio-emotional, and physiological assessments has been administered biennially for age-appropriate children. Many of the assessments, and much of the supplemental information about each child, have been based on reports from the child's mother. These reports include child demographic and family background characteristics, health history (both pre- and postnatal), and information on the child's home environment, including maternal emotional and verbal responsiveness and involvement with her child. Direct assessment of the children through the Child Supplement was done from 1986 to 2014. Mother-based child assessments, collected through the Mother Supplement, were completed from 1986 to 2016. Each of the child assessment measures is discussed in detail in this and the following sections.

Starting with the 1994 survey, children ages 15 and older were no longer assessed, but instead complete an interview modeled on the NLSY79 main Youth questionnaire administered to their mothers. Users are reminded that, while young adults are no longer administered the child instruments, they possess a child history represented in the child data file. Data obtained in the surveys during the time the young adult children were under age 15 are included as part of the child files and documented in such areas of interest as CHILD BACKGROUND and ASSESSMENT for each survey year. Most young adults have at least one survey round in which they were assessed as a child. See Tables 2a-c in the Retention section for the distribution of the number of child interviews for the NLSY79 Young Adults.

Note that beginning with the 2016 survey round, the children ages 12 to 14 have been included in the Young Adult fielding. Young Adults aged 14 complete the same set of items as 15 and 16 year olds. The 12 and 13 year olds, however, answer a more limited number of questions which include several items from the Child Self-Administered Supplement as well as the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) from the Child Supplement.

• What assessments are used and when?
• Changes in the child assessments
• What assessment scores are computed?
• Which children are assessed?
• Assessment completion rates
• Repeat assessments

What assessments are used and when?

The assessments used in the Child surveys were selected on the basis of their validity, reliability, and suitability for use in a large-scale household survey. The selection was designed to accommodate a range of child ages and a broad spectrum of dimensions in the child's development. In the following section, information is presented on the nature of each assessment and how each one is administered and scored. Issues essential to using the assessment data are highlighted. The following assessments, listed here and then discussed in detail (in separate sections), have been used in the Child surveys:

1. The HOME-Short Form - items from the HOME (Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment) Inventory, developed by Bradley and Caldwell, designed to measure the nature and quality of the child's home environment from birth to adolescence. This assessment was not administered after 2014.
2. How My Child Usually Acts/Temperament - items from Rothbart's Infant Behavior Questionnaire, Kagan's Compliance Scale and other items from Campos, which combine to form a set of maternal-report scales measuring temperament or behavioral style over the past two-week period for each child under age seven. The final year of administration for this assessment was 2016; some components ended earlier (see table 1 in this introduction).
3. Motor and Social Development (MSD) - items drawn from Poe, Bayley, Gesell, and the Denver Developmental Screening Test, which measure motor-social-cognitive development for children under age four. The MSD was not administered in 2004 or after 2016.
4. Behavior Problems Index (BPI) - items from Zill and Peterson's adaptation of the Child Behavior Checklist, developed by Achenbach and Edelbrock, which elicit mother ratings of children four years of age or older in such areas of problem behavior as hyperactivity, anxiety, dependency, aggressiveness, and peer conflict. This assessment was not administered after 2016.
5. Parts of the Body - ten items, developed by Kagan, that measure the ability of children aged one or two to identify various parts of their bodies. This assessment was not administered after 1988.
6. Memory for Locations - an assessment, developed by Kagan, that measures the ability of children eight months of age through three years to remember the location of an object which is subsequently hidden from view. This assessment was not used after 1988.
7. Verbal Memory - a subtest of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (Psychological Corporation) that assesses short-term verbal memory of children aged three through six years to remember words, sentences, or major concepts from a short story. Part C, the story, was not used after the 1990 survey. This assessment was not administered after 1994.
8. What I Am Like/Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) - two scales from Harter's Self Perception Profile for Children that measure perceived self-competence in the academic skill domain and sense of general self-worth for children aged eight and above (12 and above beginning in 1996). Starting in 2016, this assessment is administered as part of the Young Adult survey for Young Adults ages 12 and 13.
9. Memory for Digit Span - a component of the revised Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (Psychological Corporation) which assesses the ability of children seven through eleven years of age to remember and repeat numbers sequentially in forward and reverse order. This assessment was not administered after 2014.
10. Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) Math - (American Guidance Service), a PIAT subtest that offers a wide-range measure of achievement in mathematics for children ages five or older. This assessment was not administered after 2014.
11. PIAT Reading Recognition and Reading Comprehension - (American Guidance Service), PIAT subtests that assess the attained reading knowledge and comprehension of children with a PPVT age of five and older. This assessment was not administered after 2014.
12. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R), Form L - (American Guidance Service), a wide-range test used to measure the hearing vocabulary knowledge of children ages three and above. Administered to children age 4 and 5 or 10 and 11 starting with the 1996 survey round. This assessment was not administered after 2014.

Changes in the child assessments

Over time there have been changes in the administration of various assessments in the Child surveys. Details on changes in the content, administration, or scoring of particular assessments are discussed in the appropriate assessment-specific sections below. Two assessments, Memory for Location and Body Parts, were administered in 1986 and 1988, but have since been deleted from the data collection effort due to funding constraints. However, the 1986 and 1988 individual items and scores for these two assessments remain in the data file and are available to users.

Not all assessments are fielded in each child survey year. In some instances, assessments are administered only to children for whom no valid score has been obtained during a previous survey.

• Child Index Group. In 1988 a procedure was introduced by which children ages 10 or 11 were designated to complete any assessment for which they were age-eligible in order to establish a representative index group for future analyses.
• SPPC age. Starting in 1996, the Self-Perception Profile (What I Am Like) is only administered to children ages 12 and over. Starting in 2016, the SPPC is administered to Young Adults ages 12 and 13.
• Verbal Memory. The McCarthy Verbal Memory Subscale was administered for the final time in 1994.
• MSD in 2002 & 2004. In 2002 very young children were not administered assessments, which means that Motor and Social Development scores were not generated for children under age 2 years in 2002. In 2004, Motor and Social Development (previously completed for children ages 0-3 years in the 1986-2000 surveys and 2-3 years old in 2002) was not administered.
• Temperament age. The minimum age in 2004 for the completion of the Temperament (What My Child is Like) assessment was 3 years. In survey years 1986-2000, mothers completed the Temperament scales for children 0-6 years and ages 2-6 years in 2002.
• Young Adult eligibility. Beginning with the 2016 survey round, the Child Supplement was not fielded, and children ages 12 to 14 were included in the Young Adult fielding. Young Adults aged 14 complete the same set of items as 15 and 16 year olds. The 12 and 13 year olds, however, answered a more limited number of questions, which include several items from the Child Self-Administered Supplement as well as the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) from the Child Supplement.

Users are urged to examine the NLSY79 Child and Young Adult data collection instruments, which include representations of each assessment, in order to understand the assessments that were administered to various age groups and to learn about variations in administration across survey rounds.

What assessment scores are computed?

The NLSY79 Child data files contain summary scores for each assessment measure. For a subset of assessments, subscores are constructed. Where available, the user is provided with national norms based on the raw scores. Table 1 lists the raw and normed scores that are available for the most recent Child survey year. Summary scores and subscores for 2016, the most recent survey, can be found in the ASSESSMENT 2016 area of interest in the NLS Investigator. For prior survey rounds, summary scores and subscores can be found in the ASSESSMENT yyyy area of interest, where "yyyy" refers to the fielding year for each survey round.

The data file includes individual item responses as recorded in the field as well as interviewer reports of testing conditions for each assessment. Beginning in 2006, individual assessment item responses can be found in the ASSESSMENT ITEMS area of interest. For prior survey rounds, individual item responses can be found using the CHILD SUPPLEMENT yyyy or MOTHER SUPPLEMENT yyyy area of interest, where "yyyy" refers to the fielding year for each survey round. Edit or imputation "flags" are constructed for selected assessments to indicate where prorations were necessary or where alternate scoring schemes were considered. Scoring procedures are addressed below in relation to specific assessments.

Members of the CHRR staff have examined the assessment data as carefully as possible while preparing the assessment scores for the public use files. Researchers who encounter data or documentation problems with the assessments are encouraged to contact NLS user services. Should a problem be detected, we will inform data users by posting updates to NLSinfo.org and by correcting subsequent public releases.

Other child assessment documentation

Key references related to the assessments are cited in the References section. Users interested in additional research based on the NLSY79 child assessment data are encouraged to access the annotated, online NLS Bibliography.

Detailed information about the validity of the Child data through the 1992 survey round can be found in the NLSY79 Children 1992: Description & Evaluation. Background information on the child assessment data in the initial child survey rounds is discussed in The NLSY Child Handbook. Both documents are available on the Research/Technical Reports page.

Tables that describe the Child assessment scores in each survey round, starting with the 1994 data collection, can be found in a series of reports entitled The NLSY79 Child Assessments: Selected Tables. These reports display distributions of the raw and normed assessment scores by various child characteristics such as age and race/ethnicity. They are also available on the Research/Technical Reports page.

Which children are assessed?

In the initial 1986 Child survey round efforts were made to assess all biological children of NLSY79 mothers, regardless of their residence status. Starting in 1988, the sample of children eligible for assessment was restricted to children living part or full-time with their mothers.

Table 2 displays the number of children interviewed in the final 2016 survey by single year of age and race/ethnicity. Information on the number of children interviewed in earlier survey rounds can be found below. (The age range exceeds 14 years in the table for years prior to 1994, since that marks the first year of the Young Adult interview.)

A number of factors help explain the decline in the numbers of children interviewed in recent survey rounds. The primary reason is the diminished child-bearing of the NLSY79 women as they age through their forties and into their fifties and hence out of their childbearing years. In Table 2 above what we see is the distribution of children born to older women, i.e. the tail end of the fertility distribution for the NLSY79 cohort of women. All children ages 12 and older would have been born to NLSY79 women ages 35 and older.

Users should note that the distribution of children interviewed should not be equated with the number of children who completed the assessments. The distributions in Table 2 (and the related past-rounds table below) simply indicate the number and types of children for whom some child interview information, collected in one of the child instruments, is available.

Table 3 shows the decline, starting in 2002, in the number of children (from birth to age 14) who were assessed with the HOME Inventory. This decline in sample sizes is a function of the aging up of the Child cohort into the Young Adult sample in addition to reduced childbearing among older NLSY79 mothers. The "Sample Changes over Time" section in Sample Design has more information about the size of the child sample in each survey round.

Some assessments are completed only once by a child at the first time he or she becomes age-eligible. Others are completed at each survey point by all age-eligible children. With the exception of the Self-Perception Profile (SPPC), at each survey, ten- and eleven-year olds complete all assessments for which they are age-eligible, regardless of whether or not they had previously completed the assessment(s). This "index" group of children will ultimately represent a large, more fully representative sample for analysis. Table 4 contains details on the ages at which children were administered particular assessments. This table also summarizes changes in administration patterns.

How to identify interviewed children

Users can rely on the child sample weights (CSAMWTyyyy/CSAMWTyyyy_REV) to determine which children have assessment information in any given survey year. A child with a child sample weight greater than zero means that the child was assessed in that year. However, these assessed children will not necessarily have a valid score on any particular assessment in that year. A series of flags was introduced in 1998 to indicate the child's interview and assessment status. In 2000, the interview status series was simplified to identify children interviewed, whether the child's mother was interviewed, and an indication as to whether each type of child field instrument was administered. Starting with the 2002 survey round, the series of child interview status variables was expanded to include the constructed variables listed in Table 5.

Assessment completion rates

Table 6 provides estimates of the number of children who were administered each assessment in the current survey round and the completion rate for each assessment. (Similar completion rate tables showing the distribution of NLSY79 children with valid assessment scores in earlier survey rounds are below.) The number of children who complete each assessment continues to be substantial, so that reasonably high numbers of black, white, and Hispanic children are available for separate analyses by race/ethnicity. Sufficient sample sizes are particularly important for those assessments where there are major differences in outcome by race/ethnicity, or more importantly, where the linkages between critical explanatory inputs and assessment outcomes vary by race/ethnicity.

Table 6 shows that the percent of children receiving valid scores is quite high. Since the mother-reported assessments (Behavior Problems Index (BPI), Motor and Social Development scale (MSD) and the Temperament Scale) were integrated into the mother's main interview starting in 2006, mothers completed these assessments for nearly all age-eligible children. However, because no imputation of scores is performed either for the MSD or Temperament scores, any "Don't Know" or "Refused" responses for individual items will result in a missing value for the corresponding overall scale score.

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Repeat assessments

The availability of comprehensive child data over time, coupled with longitudinal information on the family background, education, employment histories, and well-being of the NLSY79 mothers, provide researchers with a unique opportunity to examine the linkages between maternal- family behaviors and attitudes and subsequent child development. Certain measures in the NLSY79 Child surveys, such as the HOME, are taken at each survey point. Some assessments, such as the PIAT achievement battery, are administered to a wide range of age-eligible children over a period of time. Still others, such as the PPVT, are administered at the first eligible age, and then usually at the index age of 10 or 11. 

Overall patterns of repeat interviews can be seen in the Retention section, in Table 1 for children and in Tables 2a-c for young adults.

In Table 7 we present data showing the extent to which children have been repeatedly assessed on the PIAT and PPVT. Children are included in Table 7 if they had any valid PIAT math or reading score in any of the assessment years from 1986 to the current survey round or any valid PPVT score. These counts of repeat assessment scores offer a preliminary idea of the number of data points for each of these measures over time. More than two thirds of NLSY79 children have three or more PIAT achievement measures, and more than 7,200 children have more than one PPVT score.

The pattern of repeat PIAT scores by age at the most recent assessment point is displayed in Table 8. This table shows the number of children with multiple PIAT scores, based on a count of any valid math or reading score between the initial and most recent assessment date. Children with only one valid PIAT score comprise the smallest subgroup in this table. As one would expect, the majority of 5- and 6-year-olds at the last interview date have only been tested once. Children in the middle age group and those in early adolescence have valid scores from multiple survey points enabling various measures of change to be calculated. Clearly the number of children for whom repeat achievement scores are available is large, particularly when viewing the distribution for children ages 10-14.

The number of repeat PPVT scores by child age at the date of the last valid score is profiled in Table 9. Users interested in multiple PPVT scores are directed to the index group of children who were assessed at preschool or early school levels and then again at the age of 10 or 11. Table 9 highlights the power of pooling the sample. This table shows larger numbers of children with multiple scores for assessments that were administered to them when they were age 10 or 11 years old. These children may now be of differing ages since the table displays counts at the last time a child was administered the PPVT.

These examples illustrate how NLSY79 children experience varying degrees of repeat administration of various assessments. An overall picture of the assessment history of NLSY79 children who have become young adults is available in Tables 2a-c in the Retention section.