Toward a new nationally representative household panel survey (NRHPS)
Issue title: Assessing the need for a new nationally representative household
panel survey in the United States
Subtitle:
Guest editors: Robert Moffitt, Robert F. Schoeni, Charles Brown, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Mick P. Couper, Ana V. Diez-Roux, Erik Hurst and Judith A. Seltzer
Affiliations: Public Policy, and Sociology Institute for Social Research - Room 3370, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104, USA. Tel.: +1 734 764 6526; Fax: +1 734 936 0548; E-mail: jimhouse@umich.edu
Abstract: A Nationally Representative Household Panel Survey
(NRHPS) would represent a natural extension into the mid-21st century
of the development of repeated cross-sectional and then longitudinal/panel
household surveys that have constituted major resources for developments in
social science and social policy since World War II. Although an inherently
expensive endeavor, it would keep the U.S. comparable to and competitive
with similarly wealthy nations that have already developed NRHPSs. An NRHPS
may be the most cost-effective way to generate the data needed for
advancement in social science and social policy because such progress
requires data on a much wider range of attributes of the same individuals,
households, and their environments than are currently available in existing
surveys. These surveys tend to be specialized by scientific disciplines,
substantive/policy areas, and/or segments of the population, and thus
preclude the kind of thinking and data necessary across disciplines,
substantive policy areas, and segments of the population that are most
needed in both social science and social policy. To be a cost-effective
vehicle for such purposes an NHRPS must: (1) create integration and synergy
across disciplines, substantive areas, and population subgroups; (2)
cost-effectively meet scientific and logistical challenges; and (3) foster
and utilize scientific and methodological innovations.
Keywords: Social science, social policy, nationally representative sample, innovation, interdisciplinary, cost-effectiveness, methodology
