[voiceover] National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect.
[Erin McCauley] okay everyone so it’s 12 o’clock now so I’m going to get started. But if you’re you know as people come we’ll grow a little bit in size but most of the introduction stuff people can catch up on quick. So we’ll just jump in. So thank you everyone so much for joining us. We’ll come to the National Data Archive on Child Abuse Neglect summer training series. We’re really excited to have you guys here with us. Thanks for spending your Wednesday lunch with us. Your video and your audio should be off so please keep them off. So I also want to let everyone know that the session is being recorded. We do turn the summer series into a video series so if you miss a session don’t worry you will be able to catch up. However there is a pretty considerable delay between when they happen live and when they are available on the website because we transcribed them before we post them. But each of the series sessions can be in a different order so it’s okay if you if you miss one keep on coming and hanging out with us because you can always get the information later but each session can also be viewed as kind of an independent training if you would like. Hopefully everyone’s Zoom is going well and not having issues but if you do have pretty support web site you can also email Andres’s his email is there it’s also available on our website. So welcome everyone and were getting started so as I said this is the NDACAN summer training series. This is our third annual series and it’s been kind of a new venture of ours to continue to promote the use of our data, to expand our user base and also just to you know kind of support people in research endeavors and perhaps expose people who have used some of our data with other data or perhaps other ways of dealing with things within data such as data management or linking of data. So it’s hosted by NDACAN, NDACAN is also referred to as the archive but we are the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect. We are housed in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research at Cornell University, we’ve been there for a few years in the center and we’ve been at Cornell since our founding. We do have a little announcement that today starting July 1 we are also affiliated with Duke University as one of our founding one of our directors and a co-PI is now at Duke University so will talk about that a little bit more later. So we are affiliated with both Cornell University and Duke University. This summer series is about New Horizons for Child Welfare Data. And so traditionally a lot of child welfare research has focused on survey-based data and so for the last few years we’ve really been pushing our administrative data sets. And another new horizon we have is we’re going to be introducing a new data set. It is an historical data acquisition so it takes to of our existing series what allows us to go further back in time to digitizing older data. So that’s kind of what we’re going to be talking about throughout this summer. I’ll go through this schedule and more about what we’re going to talk about when. So that some of our timeline for the summer. If you’ve been with us from previous summers you know that last summer we focused on kind of really in-depth on our three administrative data sets, how to deal with missing data in those areas and so we’re going to talk more quickly about the existing administrative data sets this summer but if you have any questions or you really want to kind of dig in deep on one I recommend checking out last year’s series. It’s available on our website, and our first series was about the NYTD data which before this historical data acquisitions was our most new data set. We are NDACAN at the upper right and we are contracted through Children’s Bureau The Administration for Children and Families. So that’s how we end up with the data. Here’s our training series schedule so it’s kind of our outline for the summer. Today we’re just doing an introduction to the data archive. Work going to talk about the data products which will be featured in the summer series but also other datasets. And then we’re going to be talking about different kind of activities and support services available through the data archive. So if this is your kind of first exposure to us this will be a great crash course on what we have to offer and if you’ve been a long time user it can be a reminder of the different available resources that we have. Next week were going to start talking about that new data that I talked about and we’re excited to have this historical data acquisition. He have a postdoc who started with us a little over a year ago, Dr. Roehrkasse who is a sociologist and he’ll be coming in next week to tell us the last year and a half. So next week he’s going to be back to give us a research example of what type of questions you can ask and answer using this new data. The following week will be the administrative data cluster so doing kind of a overview of the three existing administrative data sets, two of which line up with this historical data. The following week were going to be doing a linking workshop and so if you’ve been with us for previous summers you know that we’ve done this every year but each year we use a new software so that we can kind of help everyone with their different programming specialties so we’ll be doing that. And then our last session will be a research example kind of a conference style research presentation. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed like in previous years actually some more so we’re going to have Frank Edwards come in and do that. And he’ll also be talking about how he’s used data management in a research example that he will be presenting. So that’s kind of where we’re going this summer. And now I’m going to pass it over to Chereese Phillips we’re really lucky to have her here to do a little introduction. She is one of the kind of new overseers of the data archive and we’re really lucky to have her. She’s from the Administration for Children and Families. Chereese take it away.
[Chereese Phillips] thank you I want to welcome you all on behalf of the Children’s Bureau to the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect summer training series. I am pleased that you taking the time today to join us to expand your knowledge of the child welfare data, the data archive, and all that they have to offer in the way of researching issues pertaining to child welfare. In terms of background, the Children’s Bureau is the oldest federal agency dedicated solely to children’s issues. We were established in 1912 and over the past hundred years the children’s Bureau has played a critical role in addressing vital issues affecting families, from reducing infant mortality and eradicating child labor to preventing child maltreatment and promoting permanency for children and youth. Our budget is over $8 billion which is distributed to states formula grants however one of our roles is also to provide funding for research and dissemination projects in child welfare. One of the ways we are supporting this goal is to our long-standing partnership with Cornell University and now also with Duke to host and maintain child welfare data archive. With this summer series we hope to increase the awareness of and accessibility to all that the NDACAN has to offer. Again I want to thank you for your attention and interest. I hope you enjoy today’s overview of the archive and come back for future sessions to learn more about the ways in which you might use NDACAN to further expand the body of knowledge and empirical evidence within the field child welfare. Thank you.
[Erin McCarthy] thank you for that introduction, that perfectly summarizes our goals for this series. We really want to increase awareness and also help bolster use of the data. So this is our session agenda first were going to be talking about who we are as the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect and what we do. Going to be talking about the available data sets, we’ll do a quick overview of the data that we are going to be talking about in this series kind of a preview and then we are going to be doing a little crash course on the other survey data which will not be a feature of this summer series but we still want to make sure people are aware of that data and if they are interested to follow up on the website or with us directly. And then last with going to have a little discussion about archiving data and why we think that’s important, how do we do it and what we get as a research community from using and archiving our data. So first is NDACAN who are we in what’s do we do? Well our mission is to promote the secondary analysis of the child abuse and neglect data by providing researchers with high quality data sets, documentation, technical support, and encouraging collaboration within the scientific community. So some of you may be familiar with other data archives and we think the one thing that really makes us different is that we try not to be a passive repository of data. We do collect data, make it available and disseminate it but we also are really active in supporting data users and their analyses in their research agenda and also trying to foster interdisciplinary research teams and even recruit new users from outside disciplines to bring different perspectives and methods to the study of child welfare data. For little background we are located at Cornell University as I said we’re in the Bronfenbrenner Center. We were founded in 1988 and we’re supported by contract with Children’s Bureau. As we also alluded to, starting today we’re also associated with Duke University and so I’m going to go through our staff and kind of who is affiliated where in a moment. But we are still kind of home-based at Cornell University. So here’s an overview of our staff. All of our contact information is available on the website but we have grown pretty considerably in the last year so I want to take a moment to go over our staff to see how that’s really reflects our our mission of expanding and increasing the use of our data. So first we have Christopher Wildeman he is our director and our Co-PI he’s really at the helm right now and he is starting today as a professor of sociology at Duke University and is outgoing as a professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University. We’re also lucky to have our Co-PI and the founding director of the archive Dr. John Eckenrode also at the helm. He is a professor of human development and family studies at Cornell University. We have to research analysts who are really the experts in this data. They create the documentation and prepare the data sets for dissemination and safe both been working for the archive for over 20 years. We have Michael Dineen who many of you may have heard from if you’ve participated in prior series or in our Summer Research Institute and he will be on board for session 4 and will help do question-and-answer since he’ll be leading the linking session our session 5. We also have Holly Larrabee who does our survey-based data so we won’t be hearing from her in this series. However I talk about this a bit more later at the end of the summer series we send out a survey to ask everyone who registered. We are always seeking feedback about how we can improve but we’re also interested in the topics for future series. So thus far we picked our series topics based on the feedback we get about what where people are interested. So if you’d like to hear more about the survey-based data which Clayton will give us a little introduction to today, then recommend that for future series. We have postdoctoral associate Dr. Alexander Roehrkasse. He’s a he has his PhD in sociology from Berkeley and she’s the one who has been spearheading the historical data acquisition and we’ll be hearing from him in sessions 2 and 3. We have research associate Frank Edwards who is a professor in Rutgers in their criminal justice college and he will be leading session 6. He has also led previous sessions on data management and how to address missing data within our administrative data clusters and he’s one of our experts for the Summer Research Institute. I am the doctoral associate Erin McCauley and you will be hearing from me in nearly every session I kind of do the introduction and while I lead this one I often pass for it off to other presenters for our other series for our other sessions within the series. I am a PhD candidate in sociology and policy analysis and management at Cornell University and I will be going to Duke University as a visiting student. We’re really excited to have statistician aboard, Sarah Sernaker she just joined about a month and a half two months ago and so she’ll really be lending some new expertise and we’re excited to have that in-house expertise to help people with their research projects. If you were in the Summer Research Institute this year you will have met her. That was kind of her debut with the archive. She’s not leading any sessions this year but she’ll definitely be leading some next year. For our project manager we have Marie Cope. She does a lot of the management, coordination and keeps us on track and moving forward. You won’t be hearing from her but she definitely has a hand in everything you see. Our archiving assistant, Andres Arroyo attends all of our sessions. He’s the person to email for questions or issues, if you’ve ever requested it data set he’s the one who sends them to you. And last we have our research aid Clayton Covington who will also be going to Duke University as a researcher for the next year with the archive and he will be talking today little bit about our survey-based data and will also be talking about our administrative data for session 4. So that’s an overview of us if you have specific questions about different datasets please feel free to reach out to us and again all of our information is available on our webpage. So we think of ourselves as having six primary activities or duties. I’m going to go through each one briefly and then we’ll talk a bit more about what this means and how we do it. So first we acquire data sets. By this we mean we collect and assess child welfare data and then make them available on our website. So after we get the data we go through and we assess the quality of it and then make adjustments for where needed. Next we protect we really think of it as our primary mission to protect the confidentiality of the people who the data is about or what the dataset’s about. This works a couple different ways but we think of that as kind of our highest duty is to protect the confidentiality of children in the child welfare system. Next we transform the data so we do things like create documentation so the data is more usable, we create guidebooks and user guides, and then we disseminate data. So we license and distribute it, we do it in multiple formats to try and ease access to it. Then we support child welfare researchers and we try to spend scope of child welfare research and so this is where we really move beyond that kind of data repository to really be a resource of support for our data users. So that’s what we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about today. So this says we acquire both administrative and survey-based data and then we make them publicly available for free. We serve recipients of children’s Bureau grants which are required archive their data. If you’ve received grant recently you may have noticed that there’s been a big movement within grants broadly to archive data. And this is so that multiple people can ask questions using the data and also so that replications can be done. So if you are interested in archiving data with us there’s more information about that on our website. And there’s also some video webinars that are available online so if you have grant related to child welfare we have some data that you would like archive check it out there. So that’s we protect the confidentiality of participants. So this kind of looks like the limiting data from small counties or slightly changing dates. It’s really about just making sure that participants cannot be identified based on their data. For example in AFCARS, we re-code the ID or FIPS code- for counties with fewer than 1000 cases. We also do things like change individual dates, so a child’s date of birth is recoded to the nearest 15th of the month. And then we adjust the other dates so that they stay consistent. So the time between the first date so the date of birth and perhaps the enrollment in the child welfare system will be adjusted accordingly. We also have users sign data use agreement it’s so that they are kind of promising to use the data in an applicable way for the purpose of research to better understand the child welfare system and data users must obtain IRB approval. Next we transform the data so this is really where Michael and Holly come in with creating things like users guides and codebooks and so this is really the first place that I would suggest going if you are using a new data and not only data sets multiple times but every time I start a new project I start by rereading the user guide and the codebook these are really detailed documents that can’t really give you a leg up in starting a research project. Our data analysts will also add variables to increase the ease-of-use. So again using AFCARS as our example, Michael will go through and add two-character postal codes for states such as New York. This doesn’t originally come in the data but a lot of our users will link the data with external sources and so having consistent variables can help. And so that was something that people added a lot to have it data so we went ahead and just added it before we released it. We also calculate certain things so a lot of people is our data are interested in the child age at different dates for example age at start so if a youth is put into the foster care system we calculate that age ahead of time and then have it included as a variable. Another thing we found a lot of our data users were doing was trying to figure out if the counties were urban or rural spaces and so Michael linked in an RU13 which is an urban rural continuum code. And last we also calculate things like LifeLOS or length of stay and so we look at over the lifetime of each youth how many days were they in the foster care system. And then the other we also provide other resources aimed to help researchers use the data. For example we have analysis-software-specific support for importing data so that people can access the data regardless of what type of software they use for analysis. We also have guidebooks for merging the data that use a variety of different softwares. And we also create identifiers across the three administrative data sets that allow them to be merged. So we disseminate data, we license data to eligible researchers again we distribute it in multiple formats and we even conduct ad hoc special analysis for non-researchers. So if there is someone who’s interested in some basic analyses but perhaps doesn’t have the statistical training they can apply and we’ll do some ad hoc analyses for them. So support this is really where we step up. So many of you may already be on our electronic mailing list but if you are not I strongly recommend it. This is a kind of curated email list so our users can email out like opportunities or potential research collaborations or emerging research in this area but it’s not kind of a spam type list we do approve everything that goes out over the listserv. So we also distribute our e-newsletter on this list serve and that kind of keeps people abreast of our new data releases and the happenings within the archive and it comes out seasonally. We also have canDL which is the child abuse and neglect digital library. Clayton right now is kind of at the helm of this project and what it is is it’s basically in Zotero and if you’re interested in seeing what other people have done with the data you tag a specific data set. So if I have some research questions that I think can be really interesting using the NYTD data but I’m not quite sure what other people have done and I want to make sure I’m not you know asking questions somebody else has already asked I can login to canDL and click the NYTD tab and see all of the research that’s come out of that data set. And this includes not only published work but also things like theses or white papers. We also have two training opportunities so first we have the Summer Research Institute which is a really in-depth training program. The applications go out in kind of late winter early springtime. And what it is is it’s a 4 to 5 day research Institute where people apply to answer research question using one of our data sets. And this includes all of our survey and administrative data. We expect that people have downloaded the data, played around a little bit but need some help or support in the analysis portion. And so we select participants based on the applications and then they spend 4 to 5 days with us in an online training time. And so they this can look different depending on the year based on what’s participants need. This year it happened in early June. We had people meet one-on-one with our statistician, our data analysts and even our founding director and director. We also had people like Frank Edwards come in and lead little sessions where he prepared materials for things that really answered questions that our users in the session had.¬ For example he led a session that was about how to adjust for missing data for small counties if you are interested in looking at urban versus rural differences. So that’s a really great opportunity in fact our current PI and director Chris Wildeman was one at one point a Summer Research Institute participant long before he was in charge of the whole archive. It’s also a great opportunity to network with other people who are interested in answering questions related to child welfare. And then last we have summer training webinar series which we are all familiar with because you are here participating in it right now. This is a series that happens every summer where we get the topics sourced from you guys from our data users so again a little plug to fill out the survey I’ll send everyone at the end of the summer. And then we design different topics and so last year what we had an administrative data cluster and one thing that had come up the year before was that people were really interested more on the collection side of finding out the background of where their data came from in addition to things like the utility of the data, what kind of questions we can answer and how to manage the data. And so we had people come in who were from different organizations that helped collect the data as well. And so we really are flexible in what the topics are and you can pop in and out if there are specific sessions that are really interesting or you can spend the summer with us. And that’s we expand the research on child welfare. So we’re really interested in fostering interdisciplinary teams. We do this through trying to connect child welfare researchers on our listserv, through this Summer Research Institute, and we’re also interested in drawing in researchers from new disciplines or from different backgrounds. We do this through conference workshops if you’ve been to a workshop in the last two years you likely saw myself and/or Clayton Covington. We’ve been going to different conferences. If you have a conference that you think we should apply to a workshop at just let us know we’re always interested in expanding our user base. And we also have the summer training webinar series which we’ve been distributing information about on the website, through the listserv and then also through twitter. So I’m going to talk about our available data sets. We have two clusters of data. The administrative data has been our focus in prior sessions and this summer. There are three data sets and we’re going to be adding a third or fourth which is the historical data acquisition. The first data set is the NCANDS data set or the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. This refers to the earliest point in the child welfare system CPS reports. Next there’s the AFCARS data set which is the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. This is administrative data that refers to youth experiences within the foster care system. And then we have the National Youth in Transition Database. This data refers to youth who were identified at age 17 as likely to age out of the foster care system without finding permanent placement. This data then follows those youth at ages 19 and 21. So it’s really examining the transition to adulthood for youth who are likely to age out without finding permanent placement. Next we have a collection of survey-based data. I’m going to introduce each one and then pass it over to Clayton will give you more information about the background of the data and a research example for each one show you what type of questions this can answer. First there’s the NSCAW or National Survey Of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. We have the LONGSCAN or Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect. Then the national incidence studies of child abuse neglect or NIS. Clayton?
[Clayton Covington] alright thank you very much for that Erin, I’ll get started. So also just in response to one of the questions that sort of popped up in the Q and A, we will be briefly over viewing the NSCAW. So The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being or NSCAW is sponsored by The Administration for Children and Families and US Department of Health and Human Services and it was among the first nationally representative longitudinal studies to collect data directly from first-hand reports of children and families or other service providers have had contact with the child welfare system. Data collection for NSCAW was designed to address three major research questions. First, what paths children follow into and through the child welfare system. Second, what factors affect investigations, services, placements, and length of involvement. And finally what are the long and short-term outcomes for children and families in the child welfare system in terms of safety, well-being, and permanence. NSCAW provides insights into these questions using two samples. The first sample draws on a population in 92 participating County child welfare agencies that’s total just over 5500 children were between ages zero and 14 by the end of the CPS investigation. The second sample, known as the one year and foster care sample, consists of 727 additional children who were in and out who were in out-of-home care for about 12 months at this time of sampling. Special analyses related to out-of-home care were conducted with this sample to gauge this very unique experience. The last thing I’ll mention about the overview of NSCAW is that there are two major periods of data collection. I’ve just described the first period of collection known as NSCAW one. The a which concluded its final wave in the collection of 2004. The second collection period known as NSCAW two essentially mirrors the design of NSCAW one and it includes a cohort of just over 5800 children from ages zero to 17 ½ who had contact with the child welfare system for approximately 15 months. And this collection occurred between February 2008 and ended in December of 2012. Like NSCAW one, NSCAW two uses multiple informants associated with each child’s samples and NSCAW two uses 81 of the original 92 primary sampling units of NSCAW one. Therefore by retaining most of the sampling units researchers can assess the changes in context through the late 1990s and it enables them to conduct longitudinal analyses of organizational measures such as staff turnover, climate, and work environment. In the research example from Campbell et al 2013 the study’s objective was to describe longitudinal change and child behavior problems associated with the resolution of intimate partner violence or IPV, accurate investigation of suspected child maltreatment. They approached this question by drawing on 320 school-aged NSCAW subjects with caregiver-reported IPV. Caregivers were then interviewed approximately 3, 20, 36, and 81 months following the investigation. The authors find that 45% of caregivers reported persistent IPV conditioned on reporting IPV in the baseline interviews. Moreover, there were significant associations between IPV persistence and reductions in children externalizing their problems. In contrast, IPV resolution was significantly associated with reductions in internalizing problems. Therefore Campell et al conclude that resolution of IPV after a CPS investigation for suspected child maltreatment is associated with meaningful sustained reductions in clinically significant child behavior problems. The second of the data sets is the LONGSCAN. The Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect is a consortium of studies beginning in 1991 and ending in 2012 and it was funded by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. The key investigators in this study listed on the slide are a coordinating group based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The goal of LONGSCAN is to follow over 1300 children and their families until children themselves become young adults. Maltreatment data are collected from multiple sources including review of child protective service records every two years. Yearly telephone interviews allow the sites to track families and assess yearly service utilization and important life events. Data collection for LONGSCAN is fairly comprehensive in that it collects data on children, their families, and their teachers nearly every other year beginning at the age of 4 for the children until age 18 across five national sites. Using in-person interviews, LONGSCAN includes demographic data and measures such as academic performance, social adjustment, and behavioral problems among many others. The LONGSCAN data have a number of research and policy implications for questions related to things such as differential consequences of maltreatment, the child, family, and community factors that increase maltreatment, and the factors that increase the probability of positive child outcomes despite maltreatment and other adverse life circumstances. In the research example from Godinet, Li, & Berg, from 2014, the researchers aimed to examine the trajectory of child behavior problems over time as a function of maltreatment including differential trajectories along racial and gender lines.. Drawing from LONGSCAN, the authors selected 484 children from varying sites and broke them into two groups: children with early allegations of child maltreatment from birth to age 4, and then children without any reports. The results of multilevel modeling analyses showed no significant racial differences, however, the authors did find gender to differ in trajectory of behavioral problems among children with early allegations of maltreatment. Godinet, Li, & Berg, argue that their findings support the importance of early intervention and prevention to decrease the likelihood of presenting behavioral problems in later childhood years with considerations to gender. And our final data set is the NIS or the National Incidence Study Of Child Abuse and Neglect. In collaboration with the Children’s Bureau, the national incidence studies have been conducted approximately once each decade beginning in 1974 in response to requirements of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Although the children’s Bureau collects the annual state level administrative data on official reports of child maltreatment, the NIS are nationally representative samples designed to estimate more broadly the incidence of child maltreatment in the United States by including both cases that are investigated by authorities as well as those that are not. The unique contribution of the NIS has been the use of common definitional framework for classifying children according to types of maltreatment as well as the severity of maltreatment. A few examples of broad maltreatment variables available in this data set include physical abuse, sexual abuse, educational neglect and chemical dependency. Key demographic characteristics of maltreated children and their families are also collected which enables us to provide information about which children are most at risk. The fourth and most recent cycle of the NIS began in 2005 and ended in 2006. Because each cycle of the NIS uses comparable methods and definitions, research can compare researchers can compare estimates across cycles to identify changes over time in the incidence and distribution of abused and neglected children. And you’ll be happy to know that all of the NIS cycles are available here at the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect. In our research example coming from Legano, McHugh, & Palusci in 2009, there came was to help primary care clinicians be able to identify victims of child abuse and neglect in their practice. The study draws on the NIS-3 which used two major standards of collection. The Harm Standard, which is a relatively stringent standard in that it requires an act or omission results in demonstrated harm in order to be classified as abuse or neglect. And then there was the Endangerment Standard, which allows children who are not yet harmed by maltreatment to be counted if the child maltreatment was confirmed by CPS or identified as endangerment by professionals outside of CPS. When comparing the NIS to the administrative data, the authors were able to broadly identify a range of maltreatment practice that would have been unidentifiable with solely administrative data sets. However they ultimately conclude that there is much more work that needs to be done in specifically identifying sexual abuse in instances of child maltreatment. And with that we just have a brief overview of the national survey and cross site data holdings available here at the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect. And while we won’t cover these any further during the summer series, it’s important to know that you all as users have a voice and if you’d like to have this be covered in future series, make sure to let us know.
[Erin McCauley] thank you for that overview Clayton. We do have two questions that have popped up in the Q and A. while we have a dedicated question and answer time at the end of the presentation, you are always welcome to throw them out now. Now these are quite relevant to what we’re discussing we’ll take a moment now to answer them. So first we have a question that says I’m interested in NSCAW, will you be covering it this summer or are tutorials already available online? We will not be talking about NSCAW this summer. Will be talking about the administrative cluster (NCANDS, AFCARS, and NYTD) and then our new historical data acquisition. There are resources available online and if you are on the website looking at the NSCAW data there’s also an area where you can submit questions and that will connect you with one of our data analysts. We also have a question that says what do you mean by administrative data? And that is an incredibly important question sorry if we’re not having preemptively answered it. Administrative data are collected by governments or other organizations for non-statistical reasons to and they can provide things like overviews. And so basically what it is is this is data that’s collected by the child welfare system for their own purposes and then when it’s archived we can also use these data to answer questions that we may have as researchers. So hopefully that sums that up. If it doesn’t then we can have a longer discussion about that in the Q and A. thank you folks for those questions. So before we wrap up and move into that Q and A, we want to have a little conversation about archiving data. The first: why is archiving the data important? Well it maximizes the utility of the data. So this data are collected from children and youth within the child welfare system and instead of just kind of bad data being used for that purpose and ending. Or the data that’s been collected in a research study from it being used and then ending this really allows multiple researchers to ask different types of questions using that same data. And we all know that data collection can be a laborious process both as a participant and as someone who collects the data. And so if we can use just one or two data collections of times, they we can get a lot of more research and understanding about child welfare. It also allows data to be analyzed from multiple perspectives. So if you’re designing a study you likely have your own kind of perspective and background and questions that you want to be answered and your own kind of theoretical platforms on which your research is bound. And so by making that data available for others to do research as well than they come in with completely different perspectives and backgrounds and be able to answer different questions using that same data. It also preserves the history of child welfare data, and Alex will be talking more about why that’s important next week. And it increases research volume on issues of child welfare. So when it data set is archived it really increases the volume of research broadly in child welfare but also increases citations and different questions that can be answered on similar topics. And why we archive. So archiving data is beneficial both to contributors and to users. So archiving data with NDACAN benefits to contributor by preserving the original data and increasing the potential number of author citations. But on the other side using data archived at NDACAN also benefits the research community. If you bring a greater understanding of the child of the study of child welfare through allowing replication, extension of previous research, and really we are interested in kind of fostering that interdisciplinary collaboration and analyzing data from multiple perspectives. And so the more researchers we can have studding the child welfare system in answering different unique diverse questions the better we understand the child welfare system as a whole. And that benefits everyone. So this is our website. You can download data through the website and also access all of our support such as signing up for our listserv, accessing canDL which is where we have all the publications that use our data, there’s information about the summer research Institute, there are videos from prior summer series, so that will be in depth on the administrative data cluster and on NYTD. We also have PDFs and videos guides for linking data and informational videos and checklist for archiving and our contact information. So on that edge there we have little screenshots. The first is the main website and you just it data sets if you’d like to download the data. That’ll bring you to our data sets page where you can select any data set that you like and what you are on that you can order the data by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner. I’m also going to click this live and we’re going to hop over to the website. Okay so here we have our website so we just went through. You can hit data sets and select any data set that you would like. If we are interested in one of the NYTD data sets you can come in here and there’s multiple once we can choose from. So if we are interested in one of the complete ones where we have all three waves here’s the first one. We click that, there’s information about it you can also access the codebooks the user’s guide there. You can hop over to the canDL I look at the publications and you can order it right here. Then all the other things that you might be interested in are available here. So here we go into the Q and A. I’m going to pop up our email addresses so if you have any questions you have that are not answered during our Q and A or throughout the series or if you want to reach out to us for any reason here’s our contact information. And I just want to preview next week’s session for folks who really have to go. So next week on Wednesday Dr. Roehrkasse is going to be here talking about our administrative data that is the historical data acquisitions. We’re really excited about this new data set it’s going to be the first section of it is going to be released hopefully later this summer. So this will really be a preview you can get in ahead of the game by learning a bit about the data set and what type questions can be asked and answered using them. So now I’m going to move over to the Q and A. But I’ll leave this information up. But for those who have to leave now it’s been an absolute joy having you here and we hope to see you next week. Okay. Do you still continue collecting data now or is most data collection ending about 10 years ago? So we still collect the data also there’s typically kind of a delay so you’ll notice like we don’t have from you know six months ago. So there is kind of a delay in accessing administrative data but we are continuing to collect it. So in that website that I just pulled up we talked about the NYTD data little bit. This is a data set that follows youth who have aged out of foster care for who are identified as likely to age out of foster care without finding permanent placement. We have 2 completed cohorts so youth who were 17, 19, and 21 when they were surveyed for two different fiscal years and we are about halfway through the third cohort. So it’s definitely an ongoing process. Next, is the NIS data comparable across years for individual regions, states, or counties? Clayton I’ll pass that one to you.
[Clayton Covington] yes so the NIS I think it’s important to note is broken into regions. So there are five regions one being the East, the Midwest, the Northwest, the South, and I believe the southeast are the five regions. And so they are comparable across that geographic units but they don’t delve into states or counties because I think the full range of the NIS covers about 30 states maximum but they just aren’t comparable across regions.
[Erin McCauley] thank you for that Clayton. So we’ll give folks another minute or two to put in questions.
[Clayton Covington] so yeah Erin what I’m noticing is a number of people have actually submitted questions the of that you zoom webinar chat and I think that’s great but I think I’ll read them off and we can hopefully either you or I can answer them, or also Chereese you are also welcome to answer anything, but I’m just going to go through them. So one question broadly about the survey data is, do you provide not only the data but also the survey questions?
[Erin McCauley] so for the administrative data there are necessarily survey questions they are typically taken from records that are already collected within the child welfare system but I know that the NYTD data set is a survey data set while also being administrative about things like service access. And so in that data set if you go through the codebook it does have a copy of the question at the top and then page that shows answers that are selected from. So hopefully that answers the question. I would suggest both your both the user guide book but also the codebook will have a copy of the questions.
[Clayton Covington] next question is will this PowerPoint be publicly available to participants?
[Erin McCauley] yes so this PowerPoint and a recording and transcription of everything we’re saying will be available to everyone. However it won’t be available until after the summer series is done. We to go through and transcribe each one and then I’ll also make sure that they are compliant and so that people anyone can access them. So there’s a delay but they will be available. And you can see the sessions from previous years.
[Clayton Covington] next question is, what is the smallest geographic unit of analysis for the AFCARS data? I saw that some states were mentioned.
[Erin McCauley] the AFCARS data I believe goes down to the County level although small counties so counties with less than thousand individuals in the system are free coded. But this would also be a good question we can talk about it more in depth during session 4 which is about administrative data. And so Michael is really the expert on that. But it it does go down to County.
[Clayton Covington] next question asks, do you know of plans for NIS five? Yeah I was going to say based on what I know I don’t know of any plans for NIS five. Yeah no plans to our knowledge.
[Erin McCauley] yeah we are we’re more on the administrative data side of the archive and so I would email that question to Laura or sorry Holly Larrabee (I keep doing that) and she’ll have better answer for you or if you want to follow up with me via email I’ll go back when my email is available I can connect you with Holly. Thank you for that question.
[Clayton Covington] next question is, how will COVID affect admin data collection in 2020 and/or 2021?
[Erin McCauley] that is an excellent question and we all wish that we knew the answer to it. So we don’t actually collect the data. The data is collected and then archived with us. But I am sure that as that data becomes available will have considerable sections of user guide books dedicated that but there is a delay in accessing data between when collected and when we receive it and then go through and transform it for public use and then release it and so it won’t be an issue for for probably a year or two. But it certainly at the forefront of my mind and I think for a lot of researchers we have a lot of questions about how this pandemic will affect both you know that people that we study the people in the child welfare system but also what it means for the data collection side. But excellent question which is don’t have an answer yet.
[Clayton Covington] and our next question asks, are there any open ended questions in the data sets? To you all have qualitative data?
[Erin McCauley] on the administrative side the data is all quantitative.
[Clayton Covington] and our next question is, do we have administrative data concerning the child welfare workforce and spending in each state?
[Erin McCauley] not in this cluster. So this is mostly about children within the child welfare system and you know different there’s also information about perpetrators in the NCANDS data. But the administrative data set is about the youth in the system and then different perpetrators.
[Clayton Covington] and the I guess the only thing I would add is that you know as Erin said we don’t have administrative data about child welfare workforce but some of our national cross site data do offer insights about workforce if you’re still looking to answer some of those research questions. But as of now I believe that’s all the questions that I currently see.
[Erin McCauley] okay well then we’ll move to wrap up. Thank you all so much for coming and spending your Wednesday with us. We look forward to continuing talking about our administrative data cluster and again next week we’ll be unveiling our historical data acquisition and so we’re really excited about that and hope to you can join us but if you can’t then come back the week after because we’ll be doing a research example using that data. And at the end of the summer all of the videos will be released. And feel free to email us in the meantime. I’m going to wrap it up have good Wednesday everybody stay safe.
[voiceover] The National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect is a project of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research at Cornell University. Funding for NDACAN is provided by the Children's Bureau.