NFSS data release

This isn’t much of a blog post, but I thought I’d note here that I’ve uploaded the New Family Structures Study data and documentation to ICPSR, the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. For social scientists, it’s the most popular repository for data. After they process it, the NFSS should be publicly available there. I think it’s the right thing to do, and the right time, even though raw-data release is not required of privately-funded data collection projects in the social sciences like it is for federally-funded projects. I welcome other scholars to analyze the data, which should prove to be quite versatile. I hope its use spreads well beyond the narrow topical confines of parents who’ve had same-sex relationships and comparative young-adult outcomes. The NFSS fielded a comprehensive questionnaire to a random sample of Americans aged 18-39, includes lots of questions across numerous domains, and should attract secondary data analysts. I hope so.

The codebook and data design documentation remain available here.

A follow-up article in which I respond to critics will appear in the November issue of Social Science Research. It’s available here.