Handbook of Measurement Issues in Family Research PDF
Preview Handbook of Measurement Issues in Family Research
Handbook of Measurement Issues in Family Research Copyrighted Material Handbook of Measurement Issues in Family Research EDITED BY Sandra L. Hofferth University of Maryland at College Park Lynne M. Casper University of Southern California ~ LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS 2007 Mahwah, New Jersey London Copyright © 2007 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, New Jersey 07430 www.erlbaum.com Cover design by Tomai Maridou Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbook of measurement issues in family research / edited by Sandra L. Hofferth and Lynne M. Casper. p. cm. Based on a conference held in Bethesda, Md. in Nov. 2003 on "Measurement Issues in Family Demography". Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-S05S-5617-X 1. Family-Research-Methodology-Congresses. 2. Family life surveys-Methodology-Congresses. 3. Family demography-United States-Congresses. I. Hofferth, Sandra L. II. Casper, Lynne M. HQlO.H24 2006 306.S5072-dc22 2005044691 Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 S 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyrighted Material Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Part I: Introduction 1 Playing Catch-Up: Improving Data and Measures for Family Research 3 Lynne M. Casper and Sandra L. Hofferth Part II: Marriage and Cohabitation 2 Measuring Cohabitation: Does How, When, and Who You 19 Ask Matter? Jean Tansey Knab and Sara McLanahan 3 Measuring Cohabitation in Add Health 35 Michael S. Pollard and Kathleen Mullan Harris 4 Studying Marriage and Commitment With Survey Data 53 Paul R. Amato 5 Conceptualizing and Measuring Marital Virtues 67 AlanJ. Hawkins, Blaine]. Fowers, Jason S. Carroll, and Chongming Yang 6 Assessing Couple and Marital Relationships: Beyond Form 85 and Toward a Deeper Knowledge of Function Scott M. Stanley v Copyrighted Material vi CONTENTS 7 Developing Measures of Healthy Marriages and Relationships 101 Kristin A. Moore, Jacinta Bronte~ Tinkew, Susan Jekielek, Lina Guzman, Suzanne Ryan, Zakia Redd, Jennifer Carrano, and Greg Matthews Part III: Separation and Divorce 8 Measuring Separation and Divorce 125 Larry Bumpass and Kelly Raley 9 The Visible Hand: Editing Marital-History Data From 145 Census Bureau Surveys Martin O'Connell Part IV: Household Composition and Family Relationships 10 Mapping Children's Living Arrangements With a 159 Relationship Matrix Peter D. Brandon 11 Is Single~Parent Family a Misnomer Misdirecting Research 179 and Policies? Martha Hill and Paul Callister 12 Cohabitation and Measurement of Family Trajectories 199 Wendy D. Manning and Ron E. Bulanda 13 Measuring Poverty With Different Units of Analysis 221 John Iceland 14 Measuring Gay and Lesbian Couples 235 Gary J. Gates and Randall Sell 15 Including the Military and the Incarcerated in Surveys 245 of Families William D. Mosher Part V: Becoming a Father 16 Male Relationship and Fertility Data in the NLSY 263 Frank L. Mott, Dawn S. Hurst, and Thomas Gryn 17 Counting Dads: Improving Estimates of Teen Fatherhood 285 Scott Boggess, Gladys Martinez, Carolyn Bradner Jasik, and Laura Duberstein Lindberg 18 Qualitative Insights for Studying Male Fertility 303 William Marsiglio Copyrighted Material CONTENTS vii 19 Taking Stock: Do Surveys of Men's Fertility Deliver? 325 Christine Bachrach Part VI: Fathers and Fathering 20 Resident Father Involvement and Social Fathering 335 Sandra L. Hofferth, Natasha Cabrera, Marcia Carlson, Rebekah Levine Coley, Randal Day, and Holly Schindler 2 1 Measuring Contact Between Children and Nonresident 375 Fathers Laura Argys, Elizabeth Peters, Steven Cook, Steven Garasky, Lenna Nepomnyaschy, and Elaine Sorensen 22 Measuring Support to Children by Nonresident Fathers 399 Steven Garasky, Elizabeth Peters, Laura Argys, Steven Cook, Lenna Nepomnyaschy, and Elaine Sorensen Part VII: Conclusion 23 Progress Made, Gaps Remain: Final Observations 429 Sandra L. Hofferth and Lynne M. Casper References 437 Author Index 469 Subject Index 479 Copyrighted Material Preface The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, which comprises 20 federal agencies, was established to promote "coordination, collaboration and integration ... of Federal data on child and family issues and conditions." To carry out this mission, the Forum initiates activities to improve federal statistics on children and families. The Forum's Data Collection Commit tee, in collaboration with many researchers and policymakers, undertook a detailed review of federal statistics on marriage, divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation, holding a conference titled "Counting Couples: Improving Federal Statistics on Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, and Cohabitation," on December 13-14, 2001 (Federal Interagency Forum on Child & Family Statistics, 2001). Over the past several decades, dramatic changes have reshaped America's families. Young adults have delayed marriage. Cohabitation before marriage has become more commonplace. One in three women giving birth is now unmarried, up from 5% in 1960. The proportion of children under 18 living in single-parent families rose from 23 % to 31 % between 1980 and 2000, reflecting increased rates of both nonmarital childbearing and divorce. This transformation in U.S. families has profound implications for policymakers, but our data collection systems have not been sufficiently modified to keep pace with this transformation. It is clear that family trends have had important effects, both positive and negative, on the lives and well-being of children and adults and on the ways in which families func tion. Effective economic and social policy depends, in part, on the abil ity to understand and address the changing shape and needs of American families. This, in turn, requires valid and reliable data on marriage, divorce, ix Copyrighted Material x PREFACE remarriage, cohabitation, and the family situations of children over time at the national, state, and local levels. Policymakers use statistical data for a variety of purposes. Data provide basic point-in-time descriptions of the current composition of families and households in the United States; they map trends in family formation and structure; and they help audiences understand the causes of family change and how they affect the well-being of children. Statistical data are used for developing and targeting policies and intervention strategies, such as those currently envisioned to strengthen marriage, and for evaluating whether programs and strategies are working properly and meeting intended goals. In December 2001, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics convened the Counting Couples conference chaired by Lynne Casper and Jason Fields to assess how some of the major agencies in the fed eral statistical system were meeting the need for data on marriage, divorce, and cohabitation. More than 90 professionals from federal and state statisti cal agencies, policy organizations, and academic and research organizations participated. Workshop participants overwhelmingly agreed that the federal statistical system can and should improve consistency and accuracy in how it mea sures family structure and family transitions such as marriage, divorce, and cohabitation. Basic information is needed not only at the national level, but also at the state and local levels, where responsibility for policymak ing is increasingly shared. Participants also emphasized the need to better understand why family change occurs and the consequences it has for the well-being of families, couples, and children. They called for improved data on several topics related to this need, including the role and presence of fathers in the family, the relation between family structure and child well being, the quality of couple relationships, family attitudes and norms, and the causes and consequences of family change. The conference identified 14 "Targets of Opportunity" for improving data on marriage, divorce, and cohabitation and on the causes and conse quences of union formation, dissolution, and family change. These 14 tar gets evolved from a synthesis of the independent working group discussions among conference participants. These targets of opportunity are outlined in Table l. This volume builds on the work begun by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Academic researchers led by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Family and Child Well-Being Network teamed up with staff from the Federal lnter agency Forum on Child and Family Statistics to continue this important work. These chapters address most of the topics in the targets of oppor tunity and have greatly moved the agenda forward by critically analyzing concepts and measures and their adequacy for describing families today. Copyrighted Material TABLE 1 Targets of Opportunity Identified by Working Groups at the Counting Couples Conference I. Measuring Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, and Cohabitation • Develop cost-effective systems using vital registration and/or survey methods for providing marriage and divorce data at the national, state, and local levels. Conduct a feasibility study to assess the relative costs and benefits of vital registration and survey methods for tracking trends in marriage and divorce and providing data at the state and local, as weU as national levels , and implement recommended systems. • Standardize marital status information across surveys. CoUect comparable information on the marital status of people, with cohabitation included as a category. • Collect summary measures of marriage and cohabitation history. Ascertain the number of times married and the date the current status began in surveys whose major focus is not marriage and the family. • Collect full marital and cohabitation histories. Ensure that complete cohabitation and marital histories are collected on a consistent basis and prodded in a user-friendly format. • Include special populations. Develop and study the feasibiUty for implementing strategies to conduct reliable marriage-and family-related research on specialized populations such as institutionalized or group quarter populations, ethnic and racial minorities, gays and lesbians, and adopted and foster children. • Share existing questionnaires and knowledge. Place examples of good questionnaire items from existing federal surveys on the childstats.gov \Veb site to be used as templates for surveys seeking to improve data collection. Include methodological reports that examine measurement quality. • Improve tabulation and publication of marriage and family formation data. Expand, improve, and standardize categories presented in tables and publications to reflect the diversity of union status and family forms. II. Measuring the Causes and Consequences of Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, and Cohabitation • Increase the detail of household relationship infonnation. Identify the specific relationship of children to the adults in the household. • Develop and test key concepts. Undertake small-scale cognitive and qualitative studies to improve the measurement of important concepts, including cohabitation, social fathering, men's fertility, father involvement, and reasons for mother or father absence. Issue a report of the findings. • Include measures of family-related values and attitudes. Add a core set of attitudinal variables assessing attitudes, perceptions, and values toward family and family life to surveys whenever possible. • Obtain information for all fathers and mothers in studies of children. \Vhen appropriate, expand survey (s ) to include information on all parents or guardians in the household and all nonresident parents. ( Continued) xi Copyrighted Material
The list of books you might like
