By:
Kristin Anderson Moore
Sharon Vandivere
Paper prepared for
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, HHS
for the contract, Indicators
of Child, Family and Community Connections,
(Contract no. HHS-100-01-0011 (05).)
APPENDIX: Examples of Items from Existing Surveys
Purpose of paper. The purpose of this paper is to describe the concept of a longitudinal indicator and to present a conceptual framework for developing such indicators. The paper provides examples of existing longitudinal indicators, such as long-term poverty and welfare dependency. In addition, opportunities for creating new longitudinal measures for families are described. In some cases, it would be possible to develop new longitudinal indicators if just a few variables were added to existing data bases, and several opportunities for making such additions are presented as well.
Definition and importance. A longitudinal indicator is a measure of a family or individual behavior, interaction, attitude, or value that is measured consistently or comparably across multiple points in time and cumulated to provide a portrait over time of an important aspect of family life. Thus, a longitudinal indicator is one type of cumulative indicator. However, unlike cumulative indicators that tally experiences or characteristics at a single point in time, longitudinal indicators cumulate the presence (or the degree of the presence) of behaviors, interactions, attitudes, or values across time.
The key to a longitudinal indicator is not the way in which the data are collected; the data for such an indicator can be collected either retrospectively from a single survey or by combining data from longitudinal surveys across waves. Rather, the key feature is that it assesses a longitudinal construct. For example, instead of, or in addition to, assessing current family structure, a longitudinal indicator might assess the percentage of a child's life that the child has lived with both of his or her biological parents. As noted by Moore (1997), researchers can develop longitudinal indicators that reflect the duration of various family circumstances that children experience, including poverty or family structure, or the presence of chronic health conditions.
Longitudinal indicators can also sum non-consecutive spells in a particular status, for example, the amount of time that a family spends on welfare over a period of years. In addition, longitudinal indicators can be directional. For example, relationships between family members might be tracked over time and found to deteriorate or to improve in quality over time.
Because, by definition, longitudinal indicators assess aspects of families over time rather than at single points in time, they can be used to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how families are faring. Although we have not identified many studies that systematically compare longitudinal and cross-sectional indicators, we hypothesize that longitudinal indicators are likely to be more strongly related to family outcomes than are cross-sectional, or point-in-time, indicators. The reason for anticipating a stronger association for longitudinal measures is the greater exposure of children and families to a given influence over time, as well as the greater reliability of an indicator based on repeated measurements. Because family behaviors, interactions, attitudes, and values change over time, or may be present or absent for only brief periods of time, a cross-sectional indicator may "miss" detecting the characteristics that are most typical for a particular family by assessing that family at only one point in time. For example, a family may normally attend religious services, but a cross-sectional measure assessing attendance in the last month may miss their long-term attendance pattern, if the reference period happened to be an unusual month in which the family was not able to attend services. Furthermore, since family outcomes develop over time, characteristics that are consistent across the stages of the family's life cycle can be expected to have stronger effects on outcomes than would characteristics that are short-term or anomalous for a family.
Longitudinal measures can be particularly useful for learning about the strengths that families maintain across developmental periods of family life, because strengths tend to be enduring characteristics. For example, involvement in school activities tends to vary in frequency and type from elementary school through high school; but involvement over the years may be particularly supportive of children's school success. Additionally, they can assess over time both the qualities of relationships among family members (such as warmth), as well as family behaviors (such as religious attendance), both of which are aspects of family strengths.
On a different note, another advantage of longitudinal indicators is that, under some circumstances, they may be more cost-effective than cross-sectional indicators (Moore et al., 2002). Specifically, by spreading out the cost of assessing a family characteristic over time, rather than investing the resources necessary to gather detailed data for a cross-sectional indicator in each administration of a survey, costs may be minimized. For example, five or six items can be repeated over time and cumulated, in lieu of a 20-item scale assessed at multiple points in time. Indeed, Moore and her colleagues (2002) found that the reliability of varied shortened versions of the NLSY79 HOME-Short Form was comparable across a scale comprised of 6 items assessed 3 times and a scale comprised of 24 or 27 items assessed 3 times. Also, the strength of the association of the shorter scale with adolescent outcomes measured two years later was generally equivalent to the strength of the association of the long scale, even after controlling for social, demographic, and economic factors. Additionally, if longitudinal indicators have stronger predictive validity than cross-sectional indicators, the overall number of questions needed to assess a construct can be reduced. Thus, Moore and her colleagues found that the scale comprised of 6 items assessed at 3 points in time (cumulated for a total of 18 items) predicted delinquency and PIAT test scores (though not parent-child activities) better than a 27-item scale measured at one point in time.
Of course, there are some topics for which longitudinal indicators would not be useful. For example, we would not consider major dramatic events such as a hurricane or serious car accident to be in the same conceptual category as a longitudinal indicator. Such events represent important occurrences that may have significant consequences for children and families, so assessing them in other cumulative indicators, such as a measure of turbulence, would be informative. However, longitudinal indicators represent a particular sub-group of cumulative indicators that track ongoing involvement in a line of behavior, interactions, values, or attitudes to ascertain whether it represents a consistent aspect of family life over time.
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The project on indicators of the social context of families is organized around two complementary perspectives: the ecological model (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and a lifecourse framework (Elder, 1998). The ecological model notes that families are nested within and are affected by a number of influences, which range from quite distal factors at the societal level (macrosystems) to factors at the community level (exosystems) and then to more proximal factors in the immediate neighborhood or family (microsystems) (Coatsworth, 2002). The ecological model has recently been updated to include not only a consideration of the characteristics of persons, processes, and contexts, but also the consistency of these over time (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 1998).
Proceeding from an ecological perspective, longitudinal indicators might be developed to reflect the stability of multiple ecological contexts of family life, ranging from distal factors such as the community, labor force, and media to more proximal factors such as the neighborhood, extended family, religious institutions and schools, to very proximal factors such as the family's interaction patterns and parenting.
Overlaying the ecological perspective is a lifecourse perspective, which emphasizes how the lives of families and individuals evolve and change over time and with development. Thus, a family with several preschool children is in a quite different situation than a family with several adolescents who are finishing secondary school and moving toward independence.
Based on these complementary conceptual frameworks, a number of longitudinal indicators could be developed across the social contexts of families, including family structure; family functioning; family, work, and child care; school involvement and civic engagement; religiosity; youth development; and social connections.
Family Structure. Research indicates that events such as marital disruption can have negative implications for children (Moore, Morrison, and Glei, 1995). Moreover, research indicates that status distinctions such as whether biological parents are married or cohabiting are related to children's development (Seltzer, 2000). However, duration can provide important additional information. For example, children who live with both of their biological parents for a longer proportion of childhood enjoy numerous economic, social and psychological advantages. A measure of the number of years that parents remain together from the time that their first child is born provides this information. Such a measure could assess either the number of years of marriage or years of co-residence. Measuring the actual number of years is most successful for families in the same or similar life cycle stage, such as families with teenagers. If couples from different life cycle stages are combined, a measure of the proportion of time that parents remain together might be preferred.
A measure of consistent father involvement represents another aspect of family structure. A measure of the number of years that a father either resides with his child(ren) or remains in regular contact with his child(ren) if he does not reside in the household picks up a different construct than the duration of marriage or co-residence. Given the large number of children who do not continuously live with their biological father, it would be useful to understand how many fathers never live with their children, how many always do, and how families are distributed between these poles. Alternatively, assessing the proportion of time that fathers live with their children would yield a measure that is comparable across families in different life cycle states.
Family Functioning. Numerous aspects of family functioning have been found to be related to the well-being of the adults and children in a family, including family routines, the quality of the parents' marital relationship, the quality of the parent-child relationship, monitoring and supervision of children, and family communication. From a lifecourse perspective, it is important that these aspects of family functioning be ongoing in age-appropriate ways over time. For example, maintaining family routines consistently over time, sustaining family communication over time, being aware of and monitoring children's activities and friends as they grow older, and maintaining positive parent-child relationships as children age represent important aspects of family functioning that are not "one-shot" efforts but ongoing commitments.
Family, Work and Child Care. Secure parental employment provides an important base for family life. The absolute level of income is to be distinguished from the stability and dependability of that income. Not only is poverty associated with poorer child outcomes (Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, 1997; McLoyd, 1998), but so too is inconsistent income. For example, fluctuations in income have been linked with out-of-wedlock childbearing (Wu, 1996), as well as with lower reading and math achievement and higher behavioral problems among elementary school-age children (Moore et al., 2002).
Stable parental employment status can also be important. Some research has found that instability in maternal work status (a change between more, fewer, or no hours at all) is negatively linked with children's achievement and behavior in school (Moorehouse, 1986, as cited in Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 1998). While the largest effects were for children of mothers moving into full employment, the study also found negative effects of reductions in work hours or leaving the work force.
Consistent, dependable child care arrangements represent another longitudinal construct that affects adults, children and the family as a whole. Poorer development among young children has been linked with having a large number of child care providers or frequent changes in providers (Hayes et al., 1990). When child care arrangements fall through, parents may miss work and children may be cared for in a patchwork set of arrangements or even left in self-care.
As part of the Project on Child Well-being at the State Level, the construct of "turbulence" was developed. Turbulence assesses multiple changes in various domains of a child's life, such as changes in family structure, residence, school or child care arrangements, or fluctuations in family income (Child Trends, 1999). It has proven to be difficult to measure this construct with cross-sectional data, but it could be measured with longitudinal data that track family changes over time.
School Involvement and Civic Engagement. Attendance at signal moments such as graduation and pageants represents a different level of family involvement in the school than ongoing attendance at parent-teacher association meetings, volunteering in the classroom, and regular meetings with teachers. Continuous involvement in school keeps parents in touch with a central socializing institution in their child's life. Rather than coding involvement as high, medium or low at a particular time, such involvement might be coded over a period of years. Also, given the tendency for many parents to become less involved when their children are adolescents (Zill and Nord, 1994), sustained family involvement through the adolescent years may foster stronger academic ambitions and better school performance.
Similar contrasts in levels of involvement can occur with civic engagement, with some adults voting only in presidential elections, for example, and other adults voting consistently in off-year elections as well. Similarly, sustained volunteering or community work over a period of years is quite different than participating in a one-time event, such as a morning walkathon (desirable as that may be). Obviously, even occasional involvement is good for the community, but sustained involvement has more potential to influence family processes and overall life style. That is, sustained engagement in civic life and community activities is not just a positive contribution to the community but represents a role model for children. However, the value of sustained engagement outside the family might vary depending upon the level of activity and the age of children in the home. We are not aware of research that explores this issue, but we speculate that, when children are young, modest levels of family engagement outside the home might be reasonable, while, when children are older, greater levels of engagement and activities that involve the family as a whole might be very positive.
Religiosity. Occasional attendance on special occasions and holidays represents a very different level of religious involvement than fidelity over time. Families that attend services or classes together, say grace or blessing or read religious texts together, watch religiously-oriented television or videos together, and engage together in activities sponsored by a religious organization over a period of years demonstrate an interest and commitment. Some research suggests that parental importance of religion translates into greater religious involvement by their children (Gunnoe and Moore, 2002), and numerous studies link family religious involvement with lower levels of risky behavior on the part of children (Bridges and Moore, 2002).
Youth Connections. Consistent engagement in positive activities during the high school years has been found to predict better outcomes in early adulthood (Zaff et al., 2003). Many activities require an ongoing investment before proficiency is achieved. For example, playing a musical instrument, singing, playing a sport, debate and dance all require ongoing training, practice and performance. Hence, a longitudinal measure of sustained involvement in some kind of youth development activity should theoretically represent a stronger measure than involvement at a moment in time.
Social Connections. Inherent to the notion of being connected to friends, neighbors, and social institutions is the presumption that this relationship is sustained over time. Indeed, social capital is conceptualized as a sense of trust and mutuality that is built up over time and sustained by means of ongoing interaction (Coleman, 1988). Similarly, friends and neighbors on whom families can rely are generally those who have built up the relationship over time. Of course, in disorganized and violent neighborhoods, such potentially harmful associations may be avoided (Mekos, forthcoming). Moreover, even in a stable neighborhood or voluntary association, there is turnover, so it cannot be assumed that social connections are absolutely static. In addition, long-term residence or membership does not necessarily mean that social connections exist. Rather, time may be a necessary but not a sufficient circumstance to create the conditions in which such social connections may develop. One aspect of this construct that has been assessed, though typically only at a point in time, is the presence of social support, which is generally associated with better outcomes for individuals (Sampson, 1991), though we have not yet identified studies of family-level outcomes.
Long-term residence in a low-income neighborhood or in a high-crime neighborhood would be valuable indicators of a difficult context for family life. On the positive side, long-term residence in a moderate to higher-income community with low residential mobility might suggest less distress and greater social connections (Ross, Reynolds, and Geis, 2000).
In addition to considering how various social contexts of families might lend themselves to longitudinal measures, researchers must also consider the appropriate time period over which these indicators should be assessed. In the absence of an empirical literature, such choices must be driven by theory and common sense. In general, the notion of a longitudinal indicator implies that it is measured over at least two or three years or longer, if possible. Many survey questions currently ask about activities in the past year, so this rather limited version of a longitudinal indicator is available now for some constructs. (For example, attendance at religious services in the National Survey of America's Families is assessed over the past year.) However, cumulating such a variable across two or three years or longer would be more informative. Long-term poverty and welfare receipt, for example, can be measured across four years in Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and even longer in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2003). Lifetime measures represent a special case of longitudinal variables. One example would be the proportion of a child's life that his or her biological parents were married.
In general, it seems that measures should be assessed for at least two or three years and up to four or five years, or even longer when appropriate and feasible. Longer time frames are helpful for statuses that can be reported retrospectively, e.g., using an event history calendar. However, people's ability to recall distant events accurately argues against going back more than a decade, except for highly salient events, such as births and marriages. If data are taken from multiple waves of a longitudinal survey, the value of a longer time frame has to be balanced against the cost of collecting data for many years and the attrition that is likely to occur over a period of years and the extent to which the sample would be biased by that attrition. Fortunately, a number of longitudinal surveys (such as the Panel Study of Income Dynamics) have collected annual data on work, income, family structure, and other topics for many years and could readily support construction of longitudinal indicators.
Our discussion of potential longitudinal indicators for each of the social contexts of families that we have considered for this project indicates that many cross-sectional indicators have a corresponding longitudinal indicator that provides a useful perspective on the stability or duration of that indicator across families. Nevertheless, not every construct lends itself to longitudinal measurement or is of sufficient importance to warrant an ongoing investment in data collection. Families can experience discrete events occurring at one point in time that change the course of their lives. Such discrete experiences are not appropriately assessed using longitudinal indicators, and can instead be assessed in a cross-sectional survey by asking families if they have ever experienced a particular event. In contrast, the strength of longitudinal indicators lies in their ability to assess the consistency of family characteristics, interactions, attitudes, values, or behaviors over time.
To decide which constructs warrant development of longitudinal indicators, we suggest identifying several potential measures in each of the major ecological domains and focusing on those constructs found to be related to family, adult and child well-being, and self-sufficiency. Examples of such constructs are provided in the next section.
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Longitudinal measures are more often used in basic research studies than as social indicators. Indeed, the set of available longitudinal indicators is very small, and many domains have only cross-sectional indicators. Nevertheless, although longitudinal indicators are not common at present, a few examples are available. For example, in the social context of family, work, and child care, the annual report to Congress on Indicators of Welfare Dependence contains a measure of long-term poverty and long-term welfare receipt (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2003). These indicators go beyond reports of poverty or welfare receipt at the time of the interview or during the previous month to assess the number or proportion of the past several years that a family has received welfare or been in poverty.
Long-term poverty is probably the most widely-known longitudinal indicator relevant to families, and long-term poverty has been found to be associated with particularly negative outcomes for children (Duncan et al, 1994; Corcoran et al., 1992), especially young children (Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, 1997).
Another existing longitudinal indicator falls under the realm of youth connections. Consistent participation in extracurricular activities has not been operationalized in a standard way that could be used as an indicator. However, analyses of the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS:88) indicate that high school students who consistently reported across three survey interviews in eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades that they participated in an extracurricular activity during their high school years were more likely to attend college, vote, and volunteer for a community or religious organization two years after high school (Zaff, Moore, Papillo and Williams, 2003).
To support a child's learning, achievement and development, their home environment needs to be supportive as they grow up. Despite this, the quality of the home environment is more often assessed at a point in time than over time. However, Moore et al. (2002) examined a number of different ways to measure the cognitive stimulation and warmth available to a child, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort, specifically, the HOME short scale. This measure could be considered an indicator of family functioning. They found that brief scales assessing aspects of the home environment collected regularly over time predict delinquency and PIAT test scores (but not parent-child activities) similarly to or better than a longer cross-sectional measure in multivariate regression analyses. (They also found that a shortened, longitudinal measure of the Behavior Problems Index predict delinquency, PIAT test scores and smoking as well as or better than cross-sectional versions.) Unfortunately, this is the only study we have found that explicitly compared short-term versus long-term duration or exposure, apart from poverty and welfare (Zill et al., 1991).
Another aspect of family functioning that has been studied is long-term maternal depression. Studies have found that long-term depression has more negative implications for child development than shorter-term depression (review by Coiro, 1998, as cited in Ahluwalia et al. 2001).
The presence of other health problems, which could also affect family functioning, is frequently studied in public health research studies. For example, the National Center for Health Statistics tracks the incidence among children of asthma, allergies, learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Bloom et al., 2003) and, in the National Health Interview Survey, the incidence among the entire population of limitations in usual activities and limitations in work activities (Schoenborn et al., 2003). Although previous research has typically assessed the incidence of such conditions at single points in time, many of these health problems tend to be chronic, and it would be helpful to know the proportion of a child's life during which a health problem has been experienced. Caring for a disabled or chronically ill child is stressful for families (Smith et al., 2001). And while research is mixed on the academic effects of chronic illness on children, it has been linked with social adjustment problems and depression among children (Sinnema, 1991; Boekaerts and Röder, 1999). Therefore, using longitudinal indicators to assess the presence of health problems over time could be useful.
Another longitudinal measure that taps families' social connections is mobility. Mobility is often assessed with retrospective data. For example, the Census long form questionnaire asks about mobility, assessing whether each person in the household "live[d] in this house or apartment five years ago" as well as the year in which the householder moved to the present address. Mobility affects people directly, as well as geographic areas. For example, some families may move in order to improve their economic well-being or to live in a better home or neighborhood (Schachter, Franklin, and Perry, 2003). However, stability (that is, residence in the same location over a long period of time) can be positive as well, improving residents' social connections with each other, particularly in non-poor neighborhoods (Ross, Reynolds, and Geis, 2000). Residential moves that include school changes have also been linked with school problems for children (Scanlon and Devine, 2001).
While this is not an exhaustive review of longitudinal measures and indicators, it is clear that there are indicators from many domains and that, when they have been measured and studied, long-term and ongoing behavior, attitudes or circumstances are related to family and child well-being. Indeed, cross-sectional measures are in some sense taking advantage of the well-known tendency for long-term behaviors (such as welfare receipt) to be over-represented in cross-sectional data (Bane and Ellwood, 1994). Hence, if a person has a chronic illness or an unhappy marriage, they are quite likely to have that characteristic the day that they participate in a survey or study. Accordingly, many cross-sectional indicators provide a signal of the underlying longer-term condition. While it might be preferable to assess the duration of a behavior, attitude or circumstance directly, doing so needs to be considered relative to the feasibility and cost of obtaining longitudinal data in a given instance.
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Based on the ecological model and a lifespan perspective, a number of critical constructs can be identified and assessed using this longitudinal perspective. In some cases, as described above, previous research has established an association between a longitudinal measure and family or child outcomes. In other cases, it would be valuable to conduct such research.
A number of longitudinal surveys are being conducted. Most focus on individuals rather than families; however, many of these contain considerable information about the family. For example, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort includes information about the parent's religiosity and marital quality, and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study cohorts provide information on family involvement in cognitively stimulating activities. In addition, several surveys have specifically collected some kinds of information for all family members over time, for example, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
Proportion of a child's life spent with both biological parents. Data from the PSID are available since the 1960s, enabling researchers to develop a truly long-term measure of family composition.
Proportion of an adult's life since first marriage spent in that first marriage. Data from the PSID could be analyzed to create this longitudinal measure. The Chartbook includes a point-in-time indicator based on data from the PSID that also taps the concept of stability in family structure: the percentage of families that experienced a change in family structure during the past two years. This indicator could be assessed over a longer period of time, as well, either by measuring the length of time in which families do not experience a change in family structure or by assessing the number of family structure changes over a longer period of time than two years. In addition, retrospective life history information from the National Survey of Family Growth could also be used to construct such a history for women in the 1995 survey.
Father involvement over time. The Chartbook includes a point-in-time indicator assessing children's contact with non-residential parents based on data from the April Supplement of the Current Population Survey (specifically, among children who have an absent parent, the percentage with any contact with nonresident parent in the previous year). This indicator could be expanded with a focus on fathers so that, from the time a child is born, the number of months or years that the biological father lives with his child could be calculated. A broader measure of involvement could include both co-residence and regular contact with the child (e.g., at least weekly). Both longitudinal measures could be created for short periods of time using SIPP, and a longer-term measure could be created using the PSID.
A richer measure of father involvement would describe the extent to which fathers are engaged in activities with their child and help care for their child. Data on fathering activities for representative national samples of fathers are very scarce at present; however, a set of variables has been included in the NLSY97. As the young men in that study have children, it will be possible to develop a longitudinal measure of father interaction and engagement with his child. In addition, involvement of fathers who are residential can be assessed in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), which will be available for analysis in early 2004. (Data are also available for non-residential fathers, with the caveat that the response rate for non-residential fathers was lower than for residential fathers.)
Non-residential father involvement could also be examined using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), which includes a brief question on contact with non-residential parents, as well as a series of questions on the non-residential parent's involvement in the child's school. One drawback of the ELS:2002 is that, although it is a longitudinal survey, data collection begins when adolescents are in tenth grade. However, questions in the ELS:2002 could be added to other surveys that track families with children over longer periods of time.
Turbulence. Multiple changes across domains of life can result in substantial turbulence for families. These kinds of changes can include family composition changes, residential mobility, changes in school or child care arrangements for the children, and periods of unemployment for the parent(s). (Turbulence can affect any area of the social context of families, depending on what type of turbulence is assessed.) A retrospective history was obtained from the parent in the first year of the NLSY97, from which a cumulative measure could be created, and updates can be created using the annual survey data. A more short-term measure can be created using SIPP data. A measure focusing on school changes could be created based on the ELS:2002, which asks retrospectively about school changes since the first grade.
Marital quality. Identifying couples who not only remain together but who avoid high levels of conflict and sustain high levels of satisfaction would represent a valuable indicator. Research indicates that outcomes are better for children raised by couples in a low-conflict marriage (Seltzer, 2000). Research indicates that this association would be even stronger if it were measured over time (Peterson and Zill, 1986). At present, this construct is not assessed regularly in an ongoing longitudinal survey.
Consistently positive parent-child relationships. Strong parent-child relationships are regularly found to predict positive outcomes for children (Resnick et al., 1997), and this association holds even when numerous background factors are statistically controlled (Hair et al., forthcoming 2004). The Chartbook includes two point-in-time indicators assessing positive parent-child relationships: the percentage of adolescents with positive relationships with their parent, and the percentage of parents of children under age 13 who expressed various forms of warmth and affection to their child every day in the past month. These indicators could be extended so that the consistency of such positive relationships over a number of years is assessed. However, one challenge with assessing these indicators is that, at present, there is no single dataset that assesses positive parent-child relationships for children of all ages. Rather, the Chartbook used two data sources: the PSID for younger children, and the NLSY97 for older children. In the NLSY97, data provided by adolescents are available in every wave on their relationship with their residential mother, residential father, and their non-residential mother and father (if any), which could be cumulated to produce a measure of a consistently positive relationship, e.g., a relationship that is consistently in the top third or that is consistently rated as a 3 or a 4 on a scale of 0 to 4.
Consistent parental monitoring. In addition to supportive parent-child relationships, another parenting behavior that has been linked with positive outcomes for children is parental awareness of adolescents' friends and activities (Child Trends and the Ohio State University Center for Human Resource Research, 1999). This measure is included as point-in-time indicator in the Chartbook, and could be assessed longitudinally as well.
Consistent authoritative parenting. Authoritative parenting is measured by a compound variable that includes warm and supportive parenting combined with firm and consistent discipline (Baumrind, 1966). A number of studies have found that children whose parents engage in authoritative parenting develop better (Baumrind, 1966; Maccoby and Martin, 1983), though a few authors have cautioned that more controlling parenting, combined with warmth, is more common and could be more beneficial in some low-income families (Brody and Flor, 1998). A brief measure of authoritative parenting was included in the NLSY97 and repeated each year for adolescents who were 12 to 14 in 1997. These items could be cumulated to produce a measure of consistent authoritative parenting. (Analyses could also explore the possibility that consistent firm but not necessarily warm parenting is associated with positive outcomes for adolescents in lower-income families.) Authoritative parenting could be measured longitudinally, assessing the consistency of parents' supportiveness and strictness over time. Such a measure could be created from the NLSY97.
Communication and family routines. Communication and family routines are two additional aspects of family functioning that could be assessed longitudinally, using questions from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and ELS:2002.
Child Care. Child care arrangements vary over the life of a child and family, so a longitudinal measure in this case would involve stable arrangements over a period of several years. Accordingly, data from SIPP (or ECLS-B, in several years) could be explored as a source of such information.
Consistent employment and a steady income. Downward dips in income and periods of unemployment pose challenges to any family. Examining whether and how many months such negative experiences occur could be explored with SIPP or PSID data.
Parental involvement in their child's school. Data from NELS and ELS:2002 provide information about parental attendance at meetings and other forms of involvement over several years and could be cumulated to indicate the proportion of parents who remain involved in their child's education over time. For younger children, data from the ECLS-B Kindergarten Cohort could be analyzed to create a similar type of measure for elementary school children.
Attendance at religious services. Annual data from the NLSY97 can provide insight into consistent attendance for adolescents aged 12 to 16 in 1997. Patterns of involvement during the teen years have never been examined to our knowledge, despite strong correlations between religious involvement and positive outcomes for children (Bridges and Moore, 2002) and adults (Sherkat and Ellison, 1999). The ELS:2002 also includes a question on the frequency of religious attendance of a parent together with his or her child.
Participation in activities. As noted above, a measure of consistent participation in activities during the high school years has been created using data from NELS (Zaff et al., 2003). While it might be desirable to track consistent exercise and healthy habits (Harris et al., forthcoming, 2004), data availability poses a barrier. Some information has been collected in the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, but the first two waves are just a year apart, and the third wave is about five years later.
Additionally, the ELS:2002 includes questions on involvement in a variety of activities, such as sports, hobbies, clubs, and band or orchestra. Questions from the ELS:2002 could also be used to assess civic engagement and volunteering.
Disconnected youth. For a longitudinal measure of disconnected youth, an indicator could asses the proportion of youth who, over time, are neither working nor in school, nor married to someone who is. The NLSY97 could serve as a data source for such an indicator.
While it would be possible to create a number of longitudinal measures, several methodological issues need to be acknowledged. One important issue is the periodicity of data collection. Many longitudinal surveys are not conducted annually, and even when they are, an annual survey still does not provide a continuous record of family experience. For example, family activity patterns may vary across the seasons or across the school year, making it hard for respondents to count up or provide an overall average. Also, respondents may have trouble remembering the dates of events over the course of a year, or, they may recall only the major events or changes. In addition, attitudes and values may not be recalled accurately. Thus, the quality of relationships between family members is one example of a construct that cannot be recalled with precision and that might benefit from being assessed quarterly or even more often.
On the other hand, respondents can probably report changes in many constructs, such as employment, fairly accurately, particularly when respondents are provided with a calendar to aid their reporting. Unfortunately, while respondent recall has been studied extensively for income, leading to the fielding of the Survey of Income and Program Participation every four months, no knowledge base exists that enables us to identify the degree to which the quality of non-economic data is affected by using longer versus shorter recall periods, so it is impossible to recommend minimum acceptable periodicities for assessing various constructs. We note, however, that the use of calendars may aid respondents in reporting on constructs that are liable to change throughout the course of a year. Additionally, while more frequent assessment can certainly improve data accuracy, we acknowledge that the huge expense of increasing the periodicity of surveys will typically outweigh the benefits of marginal improvements in data quality.
Also, some constructs are difficult to measure across the life cycle. In particular, constructs that need to change as children become older are difficult to measure as longitudinal indicators. For example, a measure of parental awareness and monitoring has been included in the NLSY97; however, at present we lack the knowledge base to develop an age-adjusted indicator of appropriate monitoring across ages 12 through 17. A cross sectional indicator, or a short-term indicator, could be developed for such constructs; but truly longitudinal indicators would require some development.
Another concern is posed by attrition from longitudinal surveys. If surveys experience high levels of attrition, then indicators developed from such surveys may not be representative of the society. Fortunately, most federally sponsored surveys have fairly high response rates; but it is nevertheless necessary to be alert to this possibility.
Assessing the way longitudinal indicators change in the population over time also represents a challenge. Other population changes (for example, immigration), in addition to sample attrition, render the remaining sample less representative of the general population with similar characteristics. While longitudinal surveys are the ideal source for longitudinal indicators, repeated cross-sectional surveys are the most appropriate for trend analyses. This is because longitudinal surveys typically follow one cohort over time (an exception is the Panel Study of Income Dynamics), but trend analyses compare different cohorts across time. For example, longitudinal measures could be created using consecutive waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997, which collects data every year on adolescents who were ages 12 to 16 in 1997. However, analogous data sources do not exist to compare longitudinal indicators for 12- to 16-year-olds in 1997 to longitudinal indicators for 12- to 16-year-olds in 2000 or 2003. For trend analyses, one possible solution could be to collect retrospective data in repeated cross-sectional surveys. The quality of data from repeated cross-sectional surveys using retrospective measures would not be as high as with longitudinal data, for the same reason that data quality is not as high as would be ideal even with longitudinal surveys that are conducted annually or less frequently. Specifically, the longer the recall period, the greater the opportunity for recall bias or simply for respondent errors in reporting.
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In summary, a number of studies have found that long-term exposure to a positive or negative experience has important implications children and families, and we hypothesize that, in many cases, the effects of long-term experiences may be stronger than the effects of short-term experiences. Nevertheless, the potential of a longitudinal perspective for social indicators is not widely recognized, and little research has systematically compared point-in-time measures with longitudinal indicators. Moreover, although we have been able to identify a broad and interesting set of possible new longitudinal indicators, the set of available measures is very small. Other longitudinal indicators that could theoretically be of substantial interest cannot be tabulated because the data needed to create a rich set of longitudinal indicators are not readily available. For example, most constructs would need to be measured identically over time, so that they could be cumulated. In some cases, age appropriate measures would need to be developed so that, even though identical questions were not asked in each survey, the same construct would be measured on a comparable metric, so that a cumulative measure could be created. This has been done, for example, with parent involvement questions in the NLSY97. Every two years, parents are asked four questions about their involvement with each of their children in age-appropriate ways that change as the child gets older. Where such data exist, exemplary longitudinal indicators could be developed.
Moreover, this review suggests that a number of longitudinal indicators can be created from data currently available on important domains of the social context of families. In fact, a number of measures can be created for families with young children as well as families with older children. Examples include parent involvement in children's schools, religious attendance, civic engagement, turbulence, father involvement in childrearing, and parent-child relationships.
For other constructs where data are not currently available appropriate items could be inserted into ongoing surveys. Examples include marital quality and participation in activities such as sports teams or service clubs. In addition, some measures of behavior (not attitudes, perceptions, or values, which could more readily be distorted over time) could be created with retrospective data, but the accuracy of such retrospective data needs to be examined empirically. Examples include residence with both biological parents since birth, stability in child-care arrangements, and residential mobility. The cost of adding items to existing surveys is modest, compared to developing and fielding new surveys. However, we acknowledge that virtually all existing surveys are cash-strapped and some are already quite lengthy. Each additional item in a survey increases the cost of its administration. And even when budgets allow for adding items to surveys, increasing the length further could threaten surveys' response rates, since respondents may drop out when surveys becomes too burdensome. Nevertheless, many surveys welcome additional financial supporters, and respondents generally enjoy talking about their families and children, so both sponsors and respondents may welcome some new questions.
Most important, several longitudinal measures could be created by analyzing existing data and thus could be included in indicator reports rather readily. For example, an indicator of a consistently positive parent-child relationship and an indicator of consistent attendance at religious services could be created from the NLSY97. Analyses are needed to confirm that these long-term variables are associated with positive outcomes for families and children; however, prior correlational research and studies using point-in-time measures provide a strong basis for hypothesizing such associations. Assuming that these expectations are confirmed in multivariate prospective analyses that use longitudinal variables to predict child and family outcomes over time, the indicator portfolio could be greatly enriched by the addition of longitudinal measures of the social context of families.
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Family functioning: Consistently positive parent-child
relationships.
Now we are going to list some things that might describe your [mother or
mother figure / father or father figure]. Please tell us how often she/he
does these things. That is does she/he never, rarely, sometimes, usually,
or always do these things?
Family functioning: Consistent parental monitoring
(Responses are knows nothing, knows just a little, knows some things, knows
most things, or knows everything)
Family Functioning Consistent authoritative parenting
Religiosity: Attendance at religious services
Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002)
Parent questionnaire
Parent questionnaire
Parent questionnaire
Family, work, and child care: Turbulence
Parent questionnaire
School involvement
Parent questionnaire
Civic engagement
Student questionnaire
Religiosity: Attendance at religious services
Parent questionnaire
Youth connections: Engagement in positive youth activities
Student questionnaire
Social connections: long term residence in a low-crime neighborhood
Parent questionnaire
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