DOI: 10.3886/icpsr23241
title: National Evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Urban Health Initiative (UHI): Survey of Adults and Youth (SAY), Waves 1-3, 1998-2005
title: Archival Version

description: This repeated cross-sectional national telephone survey of households was conducted as part of the evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Urban Health Initiative (UHI), a long-term effort to improve the health, safety, and well-being of children and youth in five economically distressed cities in the United States: Baltimore, MD, Detroit, MI, Oakland, CA, Philadelphia, PA, and Richmond, VA. The UHI Survey of Adults and Youth (SAY) included a variety of questions, asked of both parents and their 10-18 year old children, regarding children's health, safety, perceptions of neighborhoods and schools, family relations, quality of city services, and other issues. SAY surveyed 3 types of households -- households without children, households with children aged 0-9 years, and households with children aged 10-18 years -- in up to 14 geographic areas, including the 5 UHI program cities, 9 comparison cities demographically similar to the UHI cities, the suburban regions of these cities, the most populous 100 United States cities, and the rest of the country. There were 3 waves of SAY fielded during the course of the UHI project: during the 1998-1999, 2001-2002, and 2004-2005 school years. The vast majority of survey items in SAY are from other national surveys, including the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and the National Health Interview Survey. The survey instrument was revised between waves, but about 50 percent of the instrument remained the same across all 3 waves. All adult respondents (both parents and nonparents) were first asked questions about services and general conditions in their city. Parents were then asked additional questions about their children, their children's schools, child-related services in their communities, neighborhood and city conditions, and brief question segments about randomly selected children in various age groups. If one or more 10-18 year olds lived in the household, and if the parent respondent gave permission, up to two 10-18 year olds in the household were then interviewed about their schools, neighborhoods, peer group activities and behaviors, out-of-school time, relations with adults, and other topics. There is a separate data file for each wave, and each record contains all of the data for a given household, i.e., the data collected from one adult and up to two 10-18 year olds.
description: Weights are not included on the datasets. However, it is possible to construct base weights proportional to the within-stratum probability of sampling the household or the focal child from the number of voice phone lines in the household and the number of 10-18 year old children living in the household, both of which variables are included on the datasets. It is also possible to develop cross-stratum post-stratified weights by using census control totals for the universe of households and/or 10-18 year old children in each stratum area.
description: Response Rates: Across all waves, among the households of major research interest, viz., those with youth age 10-18, 89 percent of contacted households agreed to participate, and among those participating parents, 74 percent agreed to have their 10-18 year old child or children interviewed; 97 percent of these children participated.
description: The interviewers called randomly generated phone numbers in the geographic fielding areas. Adult respondents were screened for stratum membership based on their self-reported ZIP code of residence, and the number of their reported children in the household (if any) in the 0-9 and 10-18 age groups. Interviewers asked to speak to the male adult in the household if possible. This resulted in a slightly higher proportion of male adult respondents (approximately 35 percent across waves) than in many other national surveys. Up to eight call-backs were made to each household. The interview was offered in both English and Spanish in all three waves, and in Mandarin in Waves 2 and 3 to accommodate the Chinese population in Oakland, California.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Wave 1 Data: 1998-1999 DS2: Wave 2 Data: 2001-2002 DS3: Wave 3 Data: 2004-2005
description: The universe consisted of 3 types of households -- households without children, households with children aged 0-9 years, and households with children aged 10-18 years -- in up to 14 geographic areas, including the 5 UHI program cities, 9 comparison cities selected to be demographically similar to the UHI cities, the suburban regions of these cities, the most populous 100 United States cities, and the rest of the country. The 5 UHI cities were Baltimore, MD, Detroit, MI, Oakland, CA, Philadelphia, PA, and Richmond, VA, and the 9 comparison cities were Baton Rouge, LA, Birmingham, AL, Boston, MA, Cleveland, OH, Milwaukee, WI, Minneapolis, MN, Newark, NJ, Pittsburgh, PA, and Saint Louis, MO.
description: telephone interviewThe SAY surveys were developed by researchers at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University, and fielded under their direction by the New York City office of Abt/SRBI.