NLSCY Codebooks

Question

We have a question about the NLSCY codebooks. This was discovered by
Kevin Selbee, our other Data Specialist.

Identifying Suppressed Variables in NLSCY Codebooks.

Codebooks for Cycle 2 and Cycle 3 of the National Longitudinal Survey
of Children and Youth (NLSCY) do not contain necessary information
about the variables in the master files that are wholly or partially
suppressed in the public use files. In the case of wholly suppressed
variables, users of the PUMFs cannot tell which variables are or are
not available in the public-use files without going to the actual data
files and scanning a full set of frequency tables. In the case of
partially suppressed variables, users have no way of determining that
the frequency counts in the public data files differ from those in the
master file codebooks because valid cases in the master files have
been re-coded to missing values in the PUMFs.

Currently, the codebook for Cycle 1 contains the required
information on wholly or partially suppressed variables but the
codebooks for Cycle 2 and Cycle 3 do not.

Answer

We had looked into this issue awhile back, but were told by the author division that they will not reissue the codebooks in order to identify suppressed variables.  However, we will check back with them and see if they can provide us with a separate list of suppressed variables as a compromise.  We will keep you posted.

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Update

The author division has confirmed that they do not have a list of the suppressed variables at this time. However, they will be looking into a temporary solution for this and will let me know what they come up with. I will keep you posted.