DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04157.v1
title: National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle VI, 2002
title: Version 1

description: Cycle VI of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) was conducted in 2002 by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), with the participation and funding support of nine other programs of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Consistent with previous cycles, Cycle VI contains interviews conducted with females 15-44 years of age. A female pregnancy file was also compiled, consisting of one record per pregnancy for all female respondents having experienced pregnancy. New to Cycle 6 is the introduction of the interviewing of males aged 15-44. The male questionnaire averaged about 60 minutes in length, while the female interview averaged about 80 minutes. For most of the survey a Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) technique was used in which the interviewer entered the respondents' answers into a laptop computer. For the last section of the interview, the survey participants entered their own answers into the computer using a technique called Audio Computer-Assisted Self-Interviewing (Audio CASI). The interviews included questions on schooling, family background, marriage and divorce, having and raising children (including contraceptive use, pregnancy outcomes and "wantedness" of pregnancies, infertility and infertility services, family planning services, sterilizing operations, adoption, and medical care), sex education, first sexual intercourse, sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS, religion, race/ethnicity, employment/occupation, income, and insurance.
description: A simple random sample in which response rates and coverage were the same in every sub-group would be a "scale model" of the population. However a survey sample is almost never a scale model in that sense. Groups are often selected at different rates and often have different response rates. For example, in the NSFG, non-Hispanic black men and women account for 19.6 percent of all respondents in the sample but only 12.9 percent of the population 15-44 years of age. "Sampling weights" adjust for these different sampling rates, response rates, and coverage rates so that accurate national estimates can be made from the sample. A respondent's sampling weight can be interpreted as the number of persons in the population that he or she represents. For example, if a woman's sampling weight is 8,000, then she represents 8,000 women in the population. For the NSFG, the fully adjusted sampling weights were assigned to each respondent and consisted of 4 factors. The first factor is the inverse of the probability that the case was selected. For example, if the probability of selection is 1 in 6,000, then the initial sampling weight is 6,000. The second factor is an adjustment for nonresponse, which was calculated separately based on the probability of completing a screener, and the probability that a completed screener would result in a completed interview. The third factor is an adjustment to control totals of the number of persons by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, provided by the US Census Bureau. This process is called post-stratification. The fourth factor is trimming, which reduces the values of a few extremely large weights.
description: Response Rates: The overall response rate was 79 percent. The response rate for females was 80 percent while the response rate for males was 78 percent.
description: A total of 12,571 men and women were interviewed from a national probability sample of households in the United States. Men and women were selected from 121 Primary Sampling Units (PSUs). A PSU is a metropolitan area, a county, or a group of adjacent counties. PSUs were located in nearly every state, and included all of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. From each PSU, secondary units, called segments, were selected. Segments are, roughly, neighborhoods, or groups of adjacent blocks. In each selected segment, addresses were listed, and a sample of the addresses was taken. The sampled addresses were contacted, and a "screener" interview was attempted, in which the persons living at that address are listed. If one or more eligible persons (15-44 years of age) were living at that address, one person was randomly selected and asked for an interview.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Female File
DS2: Pregnancy File
DS3: Male File
description: Noninstitutionalized men and women between the ages of 15 and 44 living in the United States.
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); audio computer-assisted self interview (ACASI)(1) Data for CYCLE I, 1973 (ICPSR 7898), CYCLE II, 1976 (ICPSR 7902, 8181), CYCLE III, 1982 (ICPSR 8328), CYCLE IV, 1990 TELEPHONE REINTERVIEW (ICPSR 6643), and CYCLE V, 1995 (ICPSR 6960) are also available from ICPSR. (2) Although the universe includes persons between the ages of 15 and 44, three respondents in the Male data (Part 3) indicated they were 45 years of age.