Question modules are added when respondents hit a certain age and are dropped when no longer appropriate. After 1972, each respondent was contacted by phone approximately every two years, then again in person one year after the second phone interview. This pattern continued until 1987, after which respondents were personally interviewed biennially, except for 1990, when interviews were not conducted because of Census Bureau conflicts with the 1990 decennial census. The survey began using computer-aided personal interviews in 1995. Dependent interviewing For each interview, there is an extensive preload of household, employment, and personal information that was gathered in previous interviews.
Some information is collected in an event history format.
Processing - Family composition editing. There also is a mature women pension wealth calculation program and dataset.