Studies of Welfare Populations : Data Collection and Research Issues

This volume, a companion to Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition, is a collection of papers on data collection issues for welfare and low-income populations.

The papers on survey issues cover methods for designing surveys taking into account nonresponse in advance, obtaining high response rates in telephone surveys, obtaining high response rates in in-person surveys, the effects of incentive payments, methods for adjusting for missing data in surveys of low-income populations, and measurement error issues in surveys, with a special focus on recall error.

The papers on administrative data cover the issues of matching and cleaning, access and confidentiality, problems in measuring employment and income, and the availability of data on children.

The papers on welfare leavers and welfare dynamics cover a comparison of existing welfare leaver studies, data from the state of Wisconsin on welfare leavers, and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth used to construct measures of heterogeneity in the welfare population based on the recipient's own welfare experience.

A final paper discusses qualitative data. Table of ContentsFront MatterIntroduction1 Designing Surveys Acknowledging Nonresponse2 Methods for Obtaining High Response Rates in Telephone Surveys3 High Response Rates for Low-Income Population In-Person Surveys4 Paying Respondents for Survey Participation5 Adjusting for Missing Data in Low-Income Surveys6 Measurement Error in Surveys of the Low-Income Population7 Matching and Cleaning Administrative Data8 Access and Confidentiality Issues with Administrative Data9 Measuring Employment and Income for Low-Income Populations withAdministrative and Survey Data10 Administrative Data on the Well-Being of Children On and OffWelfare11 The Right (Soft) Stuff: Qualitative Methods and the Study ofWelfare Reform12 Studies of Welfare Leavers: Data, Methods, and Contributions tothe Policy Process13 Preexit Benefit Receipt of Employment Histories and PostexitOutcomes of Welfare Leavers14 Experienced-Based Measures of Heterogeneity in the WelfareCaseloadAppendix: Agenda of the Workshop on Data Collection for Low-Incomeand Welfare PopulationsIndex