Social Science Data Resources: Children & families

Access to thousands of social science datasets for research and instruction. A first place to start in looking for social science data for secondary analysis.

"Serve(s) as the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy." Includes the Decennial Census, the American Community Survey the Economic Census, and more.

Features an alphabetical list of data resources from government agencies. Includes all topics from health, education, economic, crime, child and family, immigration, genealogy, labor and many more.

Offers public access to child care and early education research data, some of which have never before been publicly available. Researchers can download analysis-ready data directly to their desktop or analyze selected data online free of charge.

Most of the datasets in the DSDR archive are raw data from surveys, censuses, and administrative records. Topic areas include:
* Fertility
* Mortality
* Health
* Family and Household Structure
* Migration and Immigration
* Population Characteristics
* Population Growth and Decline

An Open-Source Application for Publishing, Citing and Discovering Research Data

"A project dedicated to making it easy for researchers to use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The ATUS is an ongoing time diary study, started in 2003, that is funded by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and fielded by the U.S. Census Bureau. It provides detailed information about the activities in which respondents engage together with extensive information about the characteristics of those respondents and other members of their households."

A monthly survey of approximately 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The survey has been conducted for more than 50 years. A detailed demographic supplement is conducted annually in March, and supplements on other topics, including computer use and school enrollment.

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) program includes two longitudinal studies that examine child development, school readiness, and early school experiences. The birth cohort (ECLS-B) is a sample of children born in 2001 and followed from birth through kindergarten entry. The kindergarten cohort class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K) is a sample of children followed from kindergarten through the eighth grade.

This study follows a birth cohort of mostly unwed parents and their children over a five-year period. The study was designed to provide information on unwed parents, as well as the effects of policies on family formation and child wellbeing.

HUD USER provides interested researchers with access to the original data sets generated by PD&R-sponsored data collection efforts, including the American Housing Survey, HUD median family income limits, as well as microdata from research initiatives on topics such as housing discrimination, the HUD-insured multifamily housing stock, and the public housing population.

The AECF is a non-profit organization that works on behalf of disadvantaged children and collects data on benchmarks of child well-being.

Topics well-represented in the archive include sexual orientation, gender roles and the status of women, race, and socio-economic status. Application may need to be made directly to the Murray Research Archive for permission to use the data.

NACDA,"located within ICPSR, is funded by the National Institute on Aging. NACDA's mission is to advance research on aging by helping researchers to profit from the under-exploited potential of a broad range of datasets...NACDA acquires and preserves data relevant to gerontological research, processing as needed to promote effective research use, disseminates them to researchers, and facilitates their use.

The National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University focuses on the field of child maltreatment. NDACAN acquires microdata from leading researchers and national data collection efforts and makes the datasets available to the research community for secondary analysis. NOTE: Application must be made directly to NDACAN for permission to use the data.

These surveys cover learning at all ages, from early childhood to school age to adulthood. Surveys include adult education (1991, 1995, 1999, 2001, 2003), early childhood program participation (1991, 1995, 1999, 2001), and parent and family involvement in education (1996, 1999, 2003) among others.

This survey provides a comprehensive look at the well-being of children and adults, identifying differences among the 13 states which have been studied in depth: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Sample of over 40,000 families per round.

This is a longitudinal population-based survey of families and households in the United States designed to look at the causes and consequences of changes in family and household structure. Three survey waves are available: Wave 1: 1987-1988; Wave 2: 1992-1994; Wave 3: 2001-2002. (Citation information for each wave is available on the survey's home page.)

This survey "gathers information on family life, marriage and divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of contraception, and men's and women's health."

"A national study of socioeconomics and health over lifetimes and across generations...The study began in 1968 with a nationally representative sample of over 18,000 individuals living in 5,000 families in the United States. Information on these individuals and their descendants has been collected continuously, including data covering employment, income, wealth, expenditures, health, marriage, childbearing, child development, philanthropy, education, and numerous other topics."

The SCF is "a triennial survey of the balance sheet, pension, income, and other demographic characteristics of U.S. families. The survey also gathers information on the use of financial institutions. The links to the surveys provide summary results, codebooks and other documentation, and the publicly available data."

From the Center for Demography for Health and Aging: "This page is designed to aid researchers in aging find cross-sectional studies, time series, contextual data, and other data relevant to their research. About 55 studies and datasets have been highlighted in order to provide easy access to some of the most well known and useful studies of the sociological, economic, and medical aspects of aging.