NLSY79 Appendix 29: Date of Interview Current Status Variables

The NLSY79 public release data contains a set of variables for survey years 1980-2020 with information on the respondent's labor force status at each date of interview. These variables are:

DOI_EMPLOYED		DATE OF INTERVIEW STATUS – EMPLOYED
DOI_HOURS_WORKED		DATE OF INTERVIEW STATUS – HOURS WORKED
DOI_RETIRED		DATE OF INTERVIEW STATUS – RETIRED
DOI_DISABLED		DATE OF INTERVIEW STATUS – DISABLED

Below is a description of these variables and the process by which they were constructed.

Variable Description

In survey years 1979-1998 and 2006, the NLSY79 included a heavily used variable called Employment Status Recode (ESR) for each year. These variables represented the respondent's employment status during the survey week and were based on a very specific set of questions that mirrored the actual monthly Current Population Survey. Because ESR can only be computed from those specific questions, it cannot be computed in a strictly equivalent way in survey years in which the CPS section was not fielded as part of the NLSY79.

Many inquiries have been received concerning the missing ESR variables in non-CPS survey years. The Date of Interview Current Status (DOI) variables are intended to help provide a similar concise picture of a respondent's current status on the date of interview. The DOI variables provide a snapshot, capturing whether on the interview date the respondent:

• was employed (DOI_EMPLOYED)
• worked more or less than 30 hours per week (DOI_HOURS_WORKED)
• considered herself/himself retired or reported current retirement status during the course of the survey, regardless of employment status (DOI_RETIRED)
• considered herself/himself disabled, or reported current disability status in the course of the survey, regardless of employment status (DOI_DISABLED)

Users should note that the working/retired/disabled statuses are not necessarily mutually exclusive within single survey years, or continuous through multiple survey years. For example, a respondent may report that s/he is retired and disabled, but also working in some capacity at a single interview point. Likewise, a respondent who reports herself/himself disabled at one point in time may not be disabled (or provides no evidence of disability) at a later interview date. Similarly, someone who reports retirement at an earlier survey date may be working and not be identified as retired at a later survey date. For instance, respondents who have reported retirement from the military or a civil service/law enforcement position at a relatively early age may go on to a second full-time career and be identified only as employed in later years. An examination of current status variables in multiple years is necessary to determine if a respondent ever identified as retired/disabled, even if their status variables in the most current survey years do not reflect these reports.

Users should note that because the Date of Interview Current Status variables are based on weekly arrays, users may encounter a subset of cases that are assigned an "employed" status in these variables but report that they are "not currently working" in the actual survey.

Variable Creation

DOI_EMPLOYED – DATE OF INTERVIEW STATUS – EMPLOYED
These variables are based on codes in the Work History WEEKLY LABOR STATUS array. If a job number or a code for active military enlistment is present in the array for the week of interview, the respondent is assigned a current status of "1 - working." If the array for that week contains a code for unemployed or out of the labor force, the respondent is assigned a current status of "0 - not working."

DOI_HOURS_WORKED – DATE OF INTERVIEW STATUS – HOURS WORKED
The hours worked are determined from the Work History HOURS WORKED array. Those with 0 hours worked are assigned a -4 code. Respondents who worked between 1-29 hours during the interview week are assigned a code of "0 – less than 30 hours." Respondents who worked 30 or more hours that week are assigned a code of "1 – 30 hours or more."

DOI_RETIRED – DATE OF INTERVIEW STATUS - RETIRED
Current retirement status at the date of each interview was established by using available questions that allow respondents to specifically report retirement in a response category. There are only one or two such question opportunities in the NLSY79 in any given year, and they are not necessarily asked of the entire sample. For later survey years (1994-2020) comments entered during the interview were available for staff. Comments were examined to identify respondents who reported current retired status outside the structure of the proscribed interview questions. Questions used to determine retired status, with examples from 1990, 1998, 2012 and 2018, are:

• 1990 (QES-23A.##)
• 1998 (QES-23A.##, ESR_KEY)
• 2012 (QES-23A.##, RETIRE_EXP_P2_1A)
• 2018 (QES-23A.##, Q7-19.##, Q7-38)

DOI_DISABLED – DATE OF INTERVIEW STATUS - DISABLED
Similar to retirement status, current disability status at the date of each interview was established by using available questions that allow respondents to specifically report disability/inability to work in a response category. NLSY79 questionnaires offer various opportunities in any given year to report disability, although all are not necessarily asked of the entire sample. Questions used to determine disabled status, with examples from 1990, 2012 and 2018, are:

• 1990 (QES-23A.##, ESR_KEY, QES-43.##.##, Q7-19.##, Q11-3)
• 2012 (RETIRE_EXP_P2_1A, QES-23A.##, QES-43.##.##, Q7-19.##, Q11-3)
• 2018 (QES-23A.##, QES-43.##.##, QES-33.##.##,  Q7-19.##, Q7-38, Q11-3)

As mentioned for the retirement variables above, comments entered during the interview were available to staff for survey years 1994-2020. Comments for these later years were examined to identify respondents who reported current disability status outside the structure of the proscribed interview questions as listed above.

Below is the *.sas code that created the 2020 Date of Interview Current Status variables:

COMPUTE 2020 (ROUND 29) DOI_EMPLOYED