NLSY79

This section describes these three primary components of the NLSY79 codebook system and discusses the important types of information found within each. An additional codebook supplement exists for the Geocode data file.

NLSY79 variables (as well as the variables from other other NLS cohorts) are accessed using NLS Investigator, which is available as a Web application. The main application of NLS Investigator is to access NLS variables for the purposes of identifying, selecting, extracting, and/or running frequencies or cross-tabulations. This interface allows the researcher to connect to a database and perform variable extractions without installing any software on a local computer.

How much missing data are associated with particular questions? This section provides readers with an in-depth view of the questions within survey sections having a high amount of missing data. Like the previous parts, this section provides tables for each of the selected survey years. The first table (Table 1) examines questions from the 1979 survey's "Work Experience" section. This section has more missing data (14.5 percent) than any other 1979 survey section.

This section provides details on the amount of missing data associated with each respondent. Each table in this section shows the number of respondents who are missing data in one of the surveys. The tables are split into two parts. The left-hand part, columns one to four, shows the total number of questions that have missing data for each group of respondents. The right-hand part, columns five to nine, shows the percentage of questions that have missing data.

This section examines and quantifies the extent of missing data, formally called item nonresponse, in each section of the NLSY79. The six tables below show which areas of the NLYS79 respondents are least likely to answer by tracking the total number and percentage of questions that have missing data for each group of respondents. To provide readers with a detailed view of this problem, six surveys are analyzed.

This section examines and quantifies the extent of missing data, formally called item nonresponse, in the NLSY79. To provide readers with a detailed view of this problem, six surveys are analyzed. Nonresponse rates are examined first in the 1979 survey and then in the surveys that occur at roughly five-year intervals (1984, 1989, 1994, 1998, and 2004). These years were chosen to capture the major changes in the NLSY79. Examining the 1979 survey shows the initial levels of nonresponse.

Each NLSY79 questionnaire includes an interviewer remarks section that interviewers complete after finishing the interview with the respondent. Some of the information is objective (the presence of another person during an in-person survey, for instance) while other information is subjective on the part of the interviewer (such as rating how cooperative the respondent was).