    GUIDE TO USING THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

       NATIONAL EVALUATION OF WELFARE-TO-WORK STRATEGIES (NEWWS)

                FIVE-YEAR CLIENT SURVEY PUBLIC USE FILE


I. INTRODUCTION

This memo briefly describes the public use analysis file and accompanying
documentation for research on the five-year effects of 7 welfare-to-work
programs on outcomes calculated from survey responses. The 7 programs were
operated during the 1990s in 4 sites: Atlanta, Georgia; Grand Rapids, Michigan;
Portland, Oregon; and Riverside, California.   The survey was administered
around the 5-year anniversary of the date in which the sample member first
showed up at a welfare-to-work program office to enroll in the program and
attend an orientation session. Sample members were randomly assigned on that
day, either to a program group, whose members were eligible to receive
welfare-to-work services and were subject to the program's mandatory
participation requirement, or to a control group, whose members were precluded
from services and were not subject to participation mandates. The embargo on
program services for control group members lasted from 3 to 5 years, depending
on site, date of random assignment, and other factors. (See RES_MEMO.TXT for
details).

For most, but not all, respondents, the 5-Year Client Survey was the second of
two follow-up interviews. The first interview took place around two years after
the date of random assignment. Two-Year Client Survey responses and additional
outcome measures are recorded on CD #2 of the NEWWS Public Use File series.

Program effects on survey outcomes were analyzed for U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation and Administration for Children and Families; and U.S. Department of
Education, Office of the Under Secretary and Office of Vocational and Adult
Education. The National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies: How Effective
Are Different Welfare-to-Work Approaches? Five-Year Adult and Child Impacts for
Eleven Programs (Final Report), 2001.

The reports and public use files were prepared by the Manpower Demonstration
Research Corporation (MDRC) and Child Trends as part of the National Evaluation
of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (formerly known as the JOBS Evaluation). MDRC is
conducting the NEWWS Evaluation under a contract with the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS), funded by HHS under a competitive award,
Contract No. HHS-100-89-0030. HHS is also receiving funding for the evaluation
from the U.S. Department of Education. The study of one of the sites in the
evaluation, Riverside County (California), is also conducted under a contract
from the California Department of Social Services (CDSS). CDSS, in turn, is
receiving funding from the California State Job Training Coordinating Council,
the California Department of Education, HHS, and the Ford Foundation.

As part of the NEWWS Evaluation, Child Trends is conducting the Child
Outcomes Study under subcontract to MDRC.


II. DESCRIPTION OF THE DATA FILE

The ASCII data file, N5PS1726.TXT, includes 5,463 survey respondents and
contains 10 records of data for each respondent. The survey covers the
following subjects:

RECORD 1: Interview date, length, mode and other background information

RECORD 2: Participation in employment-related activities and attitudes
          toward work and welfare

RECORD 3: Degree attainment

RECORD 4: Employment and earnings

RECORD 5: Child care

RECORD 6: Welfare receipt

RECORD 7: Medical coverage

RECORD 8: Household composition

RECORD 9: Income

RECORD 10: Outcomes for all of respondents' children

Each respondent has a unique randomly-generated IDNUMBER, which appears in
columns 1-5 of each record. IDNUMBER should be used to merge the survey data
with data from other NEWWS Evaluation public use files.


N5PS1726.TXT contains 3 types of data (See N5PS_CBK.TXT and N5PSVARS.TXT for
details):

1) Respondents' answers to survey questions:

   Variable names for these measures usually begin with a letter that represents
   the survey module and a "5" to indicate that the measure comes from the
   5-Year Client Survey. For example, D5JC contains the respondent's answer to
   a question in Section D (Participation), concerning participation in job club
   or job search.

2) Additional outcome measures calculated from responses to the 5-Year Client
   Survey.

3) Additional outcome measures calculated from responses to the 2-Year- and
   5-Year Client Surveys.

   The 5-Year Client Survey includes questions on outcomes that could have
   occurred at any time after the date of random assignment. The 2-Year
   Client Survey includes many of the same questions. As might be expected,
   respondents did not always give consistent answers to both surveys. For
   instance, a respondent may have reported on the 2-Year Client Survey that she
   participated in job club after random assignment but reported on the 5-Year
   Client Survey that she never participated. Researchers should review MDRC's
   rules for constructing measures based on answers to both surveys (described
   in N5PS_CBK.TXT and N5PSVARS.TXT) when using these summary measures.

   Researchers should also keep in mind that MDRC constructed only a limited
   number of measures from responses to the 2-Year- and 5-Year Client
   Surveys. These data sets provide opportunities to create many more
   summary measures.


IMPORTANT: Values of some measures have been changed to protect sample
members' confidentiality. (See notes in codebook) The data file N5RS1621.TXT
contains the original values and is available to researchers (on a restricted
access basis) at the National Center for Health Statistics.

See www.aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/newws/data-info.htm for more information.



III. RESEARCH SAMPLES

(See N5PSSAMP.TXT and F5PCOVER.TXT for details. See also, SMP5TBL1.TXT, which
displays sample sizes for key research samples, as well as variable names for
indicators that identify samples.)


  N          Sample
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5,463        Responded to the 5-Year Client Survey

5,027        Responded to both the 2-Year- and 5-Year Client Surveys

  436        Responded only to the 5-Year Client Survey

5,408        Responded to the 5-Year Client Survey and were included in the
             research sample for The Final Report. The 55 respondents excluded
             from the Final Report sample were all control group members in
             Portland. They were excluded because they, unlike the other
             control group respondents in Portland, were precluded from
             program services for only 3 of the 5 years of follow-up.
             (See Chapters 2 and 4 of the Final Report for more information.)

2,332        Respondents in Atlanta, Grand Rapids, and Riverside also
             completed a 5-Year Child Outcomes Study (COS) Survey.  These
             respondents had a child aged 3 to 5 at the time of random
             assignment, who was designated as the "focal child" for the study.
             The focal child was the subject of nearly all questions in the COS
             Survey given to his/her mother. The child also completed a
             Self-Administered Questionnaire and took the Woodcock-Johnson Test
             of Achievement. The 5-Year COS Survey data file is contained in
             CD #3 of this series.


  262        Were chosen to complete both the 5-Year Client- and 5-Year Child
             Outcomes Study (COS) Surveys, but only answered the Client
             Survey. The 5-Year Client Survey contains information on a
             limited number of child outcomes for these 262 respondents
             and for the 2,332 respondents who also completed the 5-Year Child
             Outcomes Study (COS) Survey.

1,472        Respondents in Atlanta, Grand Rapids, and Riverside, who also
             completed a 5-Year Child Outcomes Study (COS) Survey, have
             additional information on their focal child's academic progress
             from a 5-Year Teacher's Survey completed at the focal child's
             school. The Teacher's Survey data file is included as part of the
             5-Year Child Outcomes Study (COS) Survey data file on CD #3
             of this series.


NOTE: All respondents in the samples listed above were chosen from the Full
Impact Sample, which numbers 44,569 and includes sample members from
the 3 other NEWWS Evaluation sites: Columbus, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.


IV. USING THE DATA


To analyze the effects of the programs in the most comprehensive way,
researchers should merge N5PS1726.TXT (by IDNUMBER) with other NEWWS
public use files:


Five-Year Full Sample Impacts (CD #1), which contains (for all 44,569 members of
the Full Impact Sample) background characteristics needed to calculate program
impacts and define key subgroups, measures that indicate membership in the
samples listed above, and outcome measures calculated from administrative
records.

2-Year Client Survey (CD #2)

2-Year Child Outcomes Study (COS) Survey (CD #3)

2-Year Literacy and Math Test Scores (CD #4)

5-Year Child Outcomes Study (COS) Survey and 5-Year Teacher Survey (CD #6)


The research design for the NEWWS Evaluation is complicated. (See
RES_MEMO.TXT for details). In addition, methods for calculating program
impacts differ by site. (See N5PS_IMP.TXT)

We strongly suggest that users of this file do the following before conducting
any further analyses on this and all NEWWS Evaluation Public Use File data
sets:

a. Read the _README files which give a brief description of all files
included in the NEWWS Evaluation Public Use File series.

b. Read the reports, including chapters which describe the research designs,
samples, and data sources.

c. Review the codebooks, file layouts, output, tables, and memos.

d. After reading the data into SAS or another statistical or econometric
software package, replicate the sample sizes and means.
