U.S.
Social Surveys links questionnaires from national social and health
surveys with the actual data collected by survey researchers.
With U.S. Social Surveys, you can:
- Examine questionnaire responses to see how specific populations
of Americans answered questions about topics such as teen pregnancy,
AIDS, family growth and health, or risk behavior.
- View questionnaires to plan new research, learn about survey
research methods, and study questionnaire design.
The
U.S. Social Surveys collection is housed on five CD-ROMs and includes
an instructional booklet with FAQs, Study Summaries, Teaching
Module Exercises, and a Glossary. Each CD-ROM contains a single
study, the data collection instrument or questionnaire, linked
barcharts and data tables. A Teaching Module exercise with data
extract and SPSS syntax is also available for four studies in
the collection. CD-ROM documents are in searchable PDF format.
Data
and questionnaires from six national studies are included in the
U.S. Social Surveys Collection:
The
1992
National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS)
provides useful and comprehensive information on the sexual behavior
of the general population in the United States.
The NHSLS was designed and directed by Edward O. Laumann,
Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels, of the University of Chicago,
and John H. Gagnon of the State University of New York at Stony
Brook. Data were
collected on a wide range of topics, including adolescent sexual
experiences, lifetime sexual activity, sex partner characteristics,
sexual fantasy, fertility and health, and history of sexually
transmitted diseases. Demographic
information was collected on race, religious affiliation, education,
and income. This
study contains information from a nationwide sample of 3,432 adults.
The
National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent
Health (Add Health), mandated by Congress to
collect data for the purpose of measuring the impact of social
environment on adolescent health, examines the general health
and well-being of adolescents in the United States, including
the behaviors that promote health and the behaviors that are detrimental
to health and the influence on health of factors particular to
the communities in which adolescents reside. Key measures include
diet and nutrition, eating disorders, depression, violent behavior,
intentional injury, unintentional injury, suicide, exercise, health
service use, and health insurance coverage.
The National
Survey of Family Growth, Cycle 5, 1995 (NSFG), fifth
in a series of periodic surveys of women 15-44 years of age, covers
topics such as living arrangements during childhood, and work,
complete marital and cohabitation histories, and sexual partner
histories for 5 years prior to the interview. The survey also
includes characteristics of male partners, consistency of contraceptive
use, pregnancy wantedness, and a self-administered section on
sensitive topics such as abortion and forced intercourse. The
overall objective of the NSFG is to supplement the vital statistics
of fertility and of family formation and dissolution, with more
detailed data on the "intermediate variables" which shape these
trends and on the health and socioeconomic contexts in which they
occur.
The
1995 National Survey of Adolescent Males
(NSAM), a nationally representative survey of 1,729
teenage men aged 15 to 19, was designed to increase knowledge
and understanding of the determinants of adolescent male contraceptive
use, sexual activity and related risk behaviors.
The
1997 and 1999 Youth Risk Behavior Surveys, part
of the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System established
to monitor the prevalence of youth behaviors that most influence
health and that result in the most significant mortality, morbidity,
disability, and social problems during both youth and adulthood.
These include behaviors that result in unintentional and intentional
injuries; tobacco use; alcohol and other drug use; sexual behaviors
that result in HIV infection, other sexually-transmitted diseases
(STDs), and unintended pregnancies; dietary behaviors; and physical
activity.
Each
study CD-ROM includes:
The
U.S. Social Surveys four
Teaching Module exercises introduce social science
students to a statistical exploration of real-life issues in social
research using variables from the studies in the collection. Each
teaching module offers three exercises covering various statistical
methods or concepts (e.g., crosstabulation, t-test, statistical
significance, or sample weighting) and is accompanied by a machine-readable
data extract in SPSS portable format, allowing further exploration
of the data. Teaching Modules are a useful resource for students
interested in seeing how actual theories, hypotheses, or concepts
in the social sciences are evaluated with real data. U.S. Social
Surveys and the Teaching Modules collection serves as a useful
addition to classroom or extracurricular instruction in survey
research methods, questionnaire design and development, or concept
operationalization, measurement, and analysis.
"Exploring
Issues in Questionnaire Design" uses data from the
1992 National Health and Social Life Survey to illustrate some
of the steps researchers take to develop survey instruments
and evaluate the effectiveness of their questionnaire.
"Exploring
Teen Pregnancy Risk Factors" explores the relationship
between teen pregnancy, onset of risky behaviors such as sexual
intercourse, and sex education using the National Survey of
Family Growth, 1995, Cycle 5.
"Exploring
the Relationship Between Gender, Identity, Socialization, and
High-Risk Health Behaviors" uses data from the National
Survey of Adolescent Males, 1995 to investigate young men's
attitudes about women, contraception, self-esteem, and violence.
"Exploring
the Relationship between Youth Risk Behaviors and Ethnicity"
investigates differences in risk-taking behavior among adolescents
of various ethnicities using the National Youth Risk Behavior
Survey, 1997.
