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1. Study on U.S. Parents' Divisions of Labor During COVID-19, Waves 1-2

   https://doi.org/10.3886/E183142V2  

   Carlson, Daniel L. ; Petts, Richard J. ( January 2022 )

   Abstract

   The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered family life in the United States. Over the long duration of the pandemic, parents had to adapt to shifting work conditions, virtual schooling, the closure of daycare facilities, and the stress of not only managing households without domestic and care supports but also worrying that family members may contract the novel coronavirus. Reports early in the pandemic suggest that these burdens have fallen disproportionately on mothers, creating concerns about the long-term implications of the pandemic for gender inequality and mothers’ well-being. Nevertheless, less is known about how parents’ engagement in domestic labor and paid work has changed throughout the pandemic, what factors may be driving these changes, and what the long-term consequences of the pandemic may be for the gendered division of labor and gender inequality more generally. <br /><br />The Study on U.S. Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19 (SPDLC) collects longitudinal survey data from partnered U.S. parents that can be used to assess changes in parents’ divisions of domestic labor, divisions of paid labor, and well-being throughout and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of SPDLC is to understand both the short- and long-term impacts of the pandemic for the gendered division of labor, work-family issues, and broader patterns of gender inequality. <br /><br />Survey data for this study is collected using Prolifc (www.prolific.co), an opt-in online platform designed to facilitate scientific research. The sample is comprised U.S. adults who were residing with a romantic partner and at least one biological child (at the time of entry into the study). In each survey, parents answer questions about both themselves and their partners. Wave 1 of SPDLC was conducted in April 2020, and parents who participated in Wave 1 were asked about their division of labor both prior to (i.e., early March 2020) and one month after the pandemic began. Wave 2 of SPDLC was collected in November 2020. Parents who participated in Wave 1 were invited to participate again in Wave 2, and a new cohort of parents was also recruited to participate in the Wave 2 survey. Wave 3 of SPDLC was collected in October 2021. Parents who participated in either of the first two waves were invited to participate again in Wave 3, and another new cohort of parents was also recruited to participate in the Wave 3 survey. This research design (follow-up survey of panelists and new cross-section of parents at each wave) will continue through 2024, culminating in six waves of data spanning the period from March 2020 through October 2024. An estimated total of approximately 6,500 parents will be surveyed at least once throughout the duration of the study. <br /><br />SPDLC data will be released to the public two years after data is collected; Waves 1 and 2 are currently publicly available. Wave 3 will be publicly available in October 2023, with subsequent waves becoming available yearly. Data will be available to download in both SPSS (.sav) and Stata (.dta) formats, and the following data files will be available: (1) a data file for each individual wave, which contains responses from all participants in that wave of data collection, (2) a longitudinal panel data file, which contains longitudinal follow-up data from all available waves, and (3) a repeated cross-section data file, which contains the repeated cross-section data (from new respondents at each wave) from all available waves. Codebooks for each survey wave and a detailed user guide describing the data are also available.
   

   Methods

   Response Rates: Of the 1,157 parents who participated in Wave 1, 828 (72%) also participated in the Wave 2 study. Presence of Common Scales: The following established scales are included in the survey:<br /><ul><li><b>Self-Efficacy</b>, adapted from Pearlin&#39;s mastery scale (Pearlin et al., 1981) and the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 2015) and taken from the American Changing Lives Survey</li><li><b>Communication with Partner</b>, taken from the Marriage and Relationship Survey (Lichter &amp; Carmalt, 2009)<br /></li><li><b>Gender Attitudes</b>, taken from the National Survey of Families and Households (Sweet &amp; Bumpass, 1996)<br /></li><li><b>Depressive Symptoms </b>(CES-D-10)</li><li><b>Stress</b>, measured using Cohen&#39;s Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen, Kamarck, &amp; Mermelstein, 1983)<br /></li></ul>Full details about these scales and all other items included in the survey can be found in the user guide and codebook<br /> The second wave of the SPDLC was fielded in November 2020 in two stages. In the first stage, all parents who participated in W1 of the SPDLC and who continued to reside in the United States were re-contacted and asked to participate in a follow-up survey. The W2 survey was posted on Prolific, and messages were sent via Prolific’s messaging system to all previous participants. Multiple follow-up messages were sent in an attempt to increase response rates to the follow-up survey. Of the 1,157 respondents who completed the W1 survey, 873 at least started the W2 survey. Data quality checks were employed in line with best practices for online surveys (e.g., removing respondents who did not complete most of the survey or who did not pass the attention filters). After data quality checks, 5.2% of respondents were removed from the sample, resulting in a final sample size of 828 parents (a response rate of 72%). <br /><br />In the second stage, a new sample of parents was recruited. New parents had to meet the same sampling criteria as in W1 (be at least 18 years old, reside in the United States, reside with a romantic partner, and be a parent living with at least one biological child). Also similar to the W1 procedures, we oversampled men, Black individuals, individuals who did not complete college, and individuals who identified as politically conservative to increase sample diversity. A total of 1,207 parents participated in the W2 survey. Data quality checks led to the removal of 5.7% of the respondents, resulting in a final sample size of new respondents at Wave 2 of 1,138 parents. <br /><br />In both stages, participants were informed that the survey would take approximately 20 minutes to complete. All panelists were provided monetary compensation in line with Prolific’s compensation guidelines, which require that all participants earn above minimum wage for their time participating in studies. <br /> To be included in SPDLC, respondents had to meet the following sampling criteria at the time they enter the study: (a) be at least 18 years old, (b) reside in the United States, (c) reside with a romantic partner (i.e., be married or cohabiting), and (d) be a parent living with at least one biological child. Follow-up respondents must be at least 18 years old and reside in the United States, but may experience changes in relationship and resident parent statuses. Smallest Geographic Unit: U.S. State <p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. In accordance with this license, all users of these data must give appropriate credit to the authors in any papers, presentations, books, or other works that use the data. A suggested citation to provide attribution for these data is included below:             <br /><br />Carlson, Daniel L. and Richard J. Petts. 2022. Study on U.S. Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19 User Guide: Waves 1-2.  </p>
   

   Other

   To help provide estimates that are more representative of U.S. partnered parents, the SPDLC includes sampling weights. Weights can be included in statistical analyses to make estimates from the SPDLC sample representative of U.S. parents who reside with a romantic partner (married or cohabiting) and a child aged 18 or younger based on age, race/ethnicity, and gender. National estimates for the age, racial/ethnic, and gender profile of U.S. partnered parents were obtained using data from the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS). Weights were calculated using an iterative raking method, such that the full sample in each data file matches the nationally representative CPS data in regard to the gender, age, and racial/ethnic distributions within the data. This variable is labeled <b>CPSweightW2</b> in the Wave 2 dataset, and <b>CPSweightLW2</b> in the longitudinal dataset (which includes Waves 1 and 2). There is not a weight variable included in the W1-W2 repeated cross-section data file.<br />
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2. The Visible Cash Effect with Prepaid Incentives: Evidence for Data Quality, Response Rates, Generalizability, and Cost

   https://doi.org/10.1093/jssam/smac032  

   DeBell, Matthew ( November 2022 , Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology)

   A prior study found that mailing prepaid incentives with $5 cash visible from outside the envelope increased the response rate to a mail survey by 4 percentage points compared to cash that was not externally visible. This “visible cash effect” suggests opportunities to improve survey response at little or no cost, but many unknowns remain. Among them: Does the visible cash effect generalize to different survey modes, respondent burdens, and cash amounts? Does it differ between fresh samples and reinterview samples? Does it affect data quality or survey costs? This article examines these questions using two linked studies where incentive visibility was randomized in a large probability sample for the American National Election Studies. The first study used $10 incentives with invitations to a long web questionnaire (median 71 minutes, n = 17,849). Visible cash increased response rates in a fresh sample for both screener and extended interview response (by 6.7 and 4.8 percentage points, respectively). Visible cash did not increase the response rate in a reinterview sample where the baseline reinterview response rate was very high (72 percent). The second study used $5 incentives with invitations to a mail-back paper questionnaire (n = 8,000). Visible cash increased the response rate in a samplemore »of prior nonrespondents by 4.0 percentage points (from 31.5 to 35.5), but it did not increase the response rate in a reinterview sample where the baseline reinterview rate was very high (84 percent). In the two studies, several aspects of data quality were investigated, including speeding, non-differentiation, item nonresponse, nonserious responses, noncredible responses, sample composition, and predictive validity; no adverse effects of visible cash were detected, and sample composition improved marginally. Effects on survey costs were either negligible or resulted in net savings. Accumulated evidence now shows that visible cash can increase incentives’ effectiveness in several circumstances.

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3. Development of a companion questionnaire for “Did You Feel It?”: Assessing response in earthquakes where an earthquake early warning may have been received

   https://doi.org/10.1177/87552930221116133  

   Goltz, James D. ; Wald, David J. ; McBride, Sara K. ; DeGroot, Robert ; Breeden, Jolie K. ; Bostrom, Ann ( August 2022 , Earthquake Spectra)

   Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems are relatively new technologies having first emerged as regional systems in the 1990s. Japan was the first nation to develop and implement a nationwide system in October 2007, and in the United States, ShakeAlert^®became available on the entire length of the US West Coast in May 2021. Assessing how EEW is perceived and utilized by alert recipients is considered essential. Such assessments are necessary to evaluate whether alert recipients are taking advantage of alert messages to initiate protective actions upon receipt of an alert, how they regard the usefulness of alerts, desirable thresholds for issuing alerts, and other aspects of these systems. Having information from users will also facilitate assessments of the success of earthquake preparedness educational programs such as the ShakeOut and whether annual drills which include information on EEW systems are resulting in behavioral response consistent with the content of these programs. Finally, information on EEW utilization will provide data useful to social scientists who study hazards to advance our understanding of behavioral response to warnings. Survey research in the aftermath of a significant earthquake in which an EEW has been issued is one obvious method of achieving these objectives and there alreadymore »exist a number of survey instruments for this purpose. A related strategy and the goal of the present research is to develop a brief questionnaire, consistent with those already developed, as a supplement to the United States Geological Survey’s “Did You Feel It?” questionnaire that has provided earthquake intensities and information on behavioral response in earthquakes, both domestic and international, since 2004. Having the intensity level at each respondent’s location is essential for relating their perspectives and actions to the shaking they experienced.

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4. Survey Development to Measure the Gap Between Student Awareness, Literacy and Action to Address Human Caused Climate Change

   Shealy, Tripp ; Godwin, Allison ; Gardner, Haley ( June 2017 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals state climate change could irreversibly affect future generations and is one of the most urgent issues facing society. To date, most education research on climate change examines middle and high school students’ knowledge without considering the link between understanding and interest to address such issues in their career. In research on students’ attitudes about sustainability, we found that half of first-year college engineering students, in our nationally representative sample of all college students at 4-year institutions (n = 937), do not believe climate change is caused by humans. This lack of belief in human-caused climate change is a significant problem in engineering education because our results also indicate engineering students who do not believe in human caused climate change are less likely to want to address climate change in their careers. This dismal finding highlights a need for improving student understanding and attitudes toward climate change in order to produce engineers prepared and interested in solving complex global problems in sustainability. To advance understanding about students’ understanding of climate change and their agency to address the issue, we developed the CLIMATE survey to measure senior undergraduate engineering students’ Climate change literacy, engineering identity, careermore »motivations, and agency through engineering. The survey was designed for students in their final senior design, or capstone course, just prior to entering the workforce. We developed the survey using prior national surveys and newly written questions categorized into six sections: (1) career goals and motivation, (2) college experiences, (3) agency, (4) climate literacy, (5) people and the planet, and (6) demographic information. We conducted focus groups with students to establish face and content validity of the survey. We collected pilot data with 200 engineering students in upper-level engineering courses to provide validity evidence for the use of these survey items to measure students and track changes across the undergraduate curriculum for our future work. In this paper, we narrate the development of the survey supported by literature and outline the next step for further validation and distribution on a national scale. Our intent is to receive feedback and input about the questions being asked and the CLIMATE instrument. Our objective is to share the nationally representative non-identifiable responses (the estimated goal is 4,000 responses) openly with education researchers interested in students understanding about climate change, their engineering identity, career motivations, and agency through engineering. Ultimately, we want this research to become a catalyst for teaching about topics related to climate change in engineering and its implications for sustainability.« less
5. Survey Development to Measure the Gap Between Student Awareness, Literacy and Action to Address Human Caused Climate Change

   Shealy, T. ; Godwin, A ; Gardner, H. ( June 2017 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals state climate change could irreversibly affect future generations and is one of the most urgent issues facing society. To date, most education research on climate change examines middle and high school students’ knowledge without considering the link between understanding and interest to address such issues in their career. In research on students’ attitudes about sustainability, we found that half of first-year college engineering students, in our nationally representative sample of all college students at 4-year institutions (n = 937), do not believe climate change is caused by humans. This lack of belief in human-caused climate change is a significant problem in engineering education because our results also indicate engineering students who do not believe in human caused climate change are less likely to want to address climate change in their careers. This dismal finding highlights a need for improving student understanding and attitudes toward climate change in order to produce engineers prepared and interested in solving complex global problems in sustainability. To advance understanding about students’ understanding of climate change and their agency to address the issue, we developed the CLIMATE survey to measure senior undergraduate engineering students’ Climate change literacy, engineering identity, careermore »motivations, and agency through engineering. The survey was designed for students in their final senior design, or capstone course, just prior to entering the workforce. We developed the survey using prior national surveys and newly written questions categorized into six sections: (1) career goals and motivation, (2) college experiences, (3) agency, (4) climate literacy, (5) people and the planet, and (6) demographic information. We conducted focus groups with students to establish face and content validity of the survey. We collected pilot data with 200 engineering students in upper-level engineering courses to provide validity evidence for the use of these survey items to measure students and track changes across the undergraduate curriculum for our future work. In this paper, we narrate the development of the survey supported by literature and outline the next step for further validation and distribution on a national scale. Our intent is to receive feedback and input about the questions being asked and the CLIMATE instrument. Our objective is to share the nationally representative non-identifiable responses (the estimated goal is 4,000 responses) openly with education researchers interested in students understanding about climate change, their engineering identity, career motivations, and agency through engineering. Ultimately, we want this research to become a catalyst for teaching about topics related to climate change in engineering and its implications for sustainability.« less