In January 2007, each student in FSoS 5014, Introduction to Quantitative Family Research Methods, was asked to summarize and evaluate information about a secondary data set used in the family field. The following summary was prepared by Chris Gonzalez.
National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW), 1997-2010
2. Study Purpose
To study children who are in the welfare system and investigate the issues of abuse and neglect within the child welfare system. It was directed by congress and is a longitudinal study.
The NSCAW is designed to address the following questions:
• What paths do children follow into and through the child welfare system?
• What factors affect investigation, services, placements, and length of involvement?
• What are the long- and short-term outcomes for children and families in the child welfare system in terms of safety, well-being, and permanence?
3. Principal Investigators
RTI – Research Triangle International
4. Years during which data was collected
Data collection actually began in September of 1999 after 18 months of planning and ended 2003.
5. Number of waves of data, and ages of participants at each wave
4 Waves of data collected. Children were ages 0-14 at the beginning of the project.
6. Participants (types and number) from whom data were collected
The sample will include a cohort of 6,000 children and adolescents who have come into contact with the child welfare system. Data will be collected in 4 annual waves from the children, their biological mother, primary caregiver (if different), caseworker, teacher, and agency administrative records.
Both children who remain in the system and those who leave the system are followed
7. Types of data (survey, interview, observation, records, etc)
Face-to-face interviews or assessments
telephone interviews
questionnaires
8. Strengths and weaknesses of the data set
Strengths:
1. First study of its kind.
2. Makes efforts to even the sample by age, gender, and major ethnic groups.
3. Reports on a variety of kinds of abuses and neglect
4. Severity of abuse is also covered, not just type of abuse.
5. The survey covers a wide variety of topics such as: cognitive achievement, social functioning, psychosocial well-being, delinquency, and sexual behavior.
Weaknesses:
1. Does not cover ethnicities beside white, black, and Hispanics.
2. Severity of abuse measures seem to favor severity as defined by the kind of abuse as opposed to the effect the abuse has. The response to the abuse is also an indicator of the severity of the abuse. Also within severity should be the response of the person who the abused first told and when they told, if ever.
3. Any secondary data set is going to have the weakness of fit for the researcher. The challenge in using this data set will be like any other, can the researcher and the data marry?
9. Accessibility of the data to the research community
There are three access gateways for this data set.
1. General use – Good for researchers becoming acquainted with the dataset. Many of the identifiers have been removed. Requires ordering online and various proofs of IRB and so forth.
2. Restricted release – Available to researchers who can demonstrate a high need for the sensitive information contained within the data set. Requires an application that may or may not be accepted.
3. Student use - For use by students who under the supervision of a faculty member.
The following restriction applies: Only faculty and non-student research personnel at institutions which have an Institutional Review Board/Human Subjects Review Committee (IRB) are eligible to order the Data.
10. My assessment of how useful this data set would be for family research
I think that this data set is an excellent one to use for its specific purpose. Families who have contact with the child welfare system often have some challenges that are not common to mainstream families – whatever that means.
American families are becoming more complex and more varied as time moves on. There are more stepfamilies, adoptive families, families in which the parents are not married or are same sex, and single-parent families. Studies that focus on “specialty� families as opposed to the families being a subset of the major study, are going to produce more useful data for better and more use research reports.
11. Website, and what kind of information is there
1. Administration for Children and Families site: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/abuse_neglect/nscaw/index.html• Overview
• Related Projects and Papers
• Data Collection Schedule
• Sample
• Data Availability
• Project Team
2. National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect
http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/Abstracts/DatasetAbstract_11.html Has a downloadable description of wave I of the data and various pathways to gain access to the dataset.
12. How does one gain access to data?
Order the general use or apply for the restricted use data set from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect website.
http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/NDACAN/Datasets/Abstracts/DatasetAbstrac t_111.html