Introduction to the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study Dataset

The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) is the longest-running and only contemporary U.S. birth cohort study of young adults based on a national sample. A key part of the country’s research infrastructure, FFCWS follows children from birth through young adulthood, enabling researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to understand the impacts of family structure, education, employment, income, health, housing, and resource sharing on human development. FFCWS uses a stratified, multistage, probability sample of approximately 5,000 children born in large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000, with an oversample of births to unmarried mothers. This sampling strategy resulted in the inclusion of a large number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income families and provides sufficient data to examine racial inequalities. Mothers were interviewed shortly after birth and fathers were interviewed at the hospital or by phone. Follow-up interviews were conducted when children were approximately ages 1, 3, 5, 9, 15, and 22. With the latest data release for the Year 22 study, which focuses on the focal children’s transition to young adulthood, researchers are able to explore a variety of topics on the health and wellbeing of the young adults, including social economic status, family formation, health and behavior, relationships, systems involvement, identity, and substance use. In addition to those topics, the study also collected data on the impacts of the pandemic on the young adults’ and their parents’ lives.

This workshop is designed for both researchers who are interested in learning about using FFCWS data for the first time and current FFCWS data users who would like a deeper dive into navigating our data. This workshop will introduce researchers to 1) a brief overview of the history and Year 27 data collection of the FFCWS, including the variety of survey and activity components included in our available data; 2) an overview of our latest contextual data files; 3) a guide to the file structure, contents, and data conventions used in FFCWS including tips and advice from experts in FFCWS data support; 4) an interactive tutorial on the contents and use of our documentation and metadata web interface. Our goals for this workshop are to provide a solid background for working with FFCWS data and to support participants as they begin variable exploration and selection relevant to their own research questions.

The FFCWS provides free access to its public use data, which covers a wide range of topics, including education, employment, housing, relationships, parenting, health, income, religion, and more. It also releases restricted use contract data to the research community via a Contract Data Agreement. Those restricted use contract data include residential contextual files, school contextual files, as well as biological and health files. The longitudinal information on individual, family, school, and neighborhood characteristics makes the FFCWS a rich data source to support research on a wide range of public policy topics, including economic wellbeing, safety net, healthcare access, substance use, racial inequity, criminal justice, child support, gun violence, policing, determinants of health, and more.