By Narayan Sastry, Ph.D. (University of Michigan)

For empirical researchers in the social and behavioral sciences who focus on children, adolescents, and young adults, high-quality survey data are an essential ingredient for studying important scientific and policy research questions. Such data are a public good and foundational infrastructure for the social and behavioral sciences. They are the equivalent of the Hubble Telescope for researchers across all career stages—but especially for new and early-stage investigators. Survey data are typically offered to the research community as a free and shared resource that can answer an untold number of questions. Recent budget cutbacks, however, threaten the future of these essential data.

I direct the Child Development Supplement (CDS) to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) which provides unique and important social and behavioral data on children in the United States. CDS is funded primarily by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It builds on the rich longitudinal and intergenerational data collected in PSID, which is an ongoing survey of a nationally representative sample of US families that began in 1968 and has collected data on the same families and their descendants for 43 waves over 57 years. Since 1997, CDS has collected data on children in PSID families, through interviews with primary caregivers, who are typically a parent, and with adolescents. CDS has also included assessments of reading and math skills, data on time use, and saliva samples for genetic analysis. 

(Read more at the Why Social Science? blog)