Continuity and Change in American Economic and Social Life: The PSID 2007-2011

收入动态小组研究（PSID）是世界上持续时间最长的具有全国代表性的小组调查。拥有近40年同一家庭及其后代的数据，PSID完全可以被认为是美国和世界上基于经验的社会科学研究数据基础设施的基石。通过对经济和社会福祉的长期衡量，以及基于加权的、具有代表性的美国家庭样本，这项研究迫使研究人员和政策制定者直面并从社会和行为过程中固有的活力中学习。长长的面板、家谱血统和广泛的数据内容为研究同一家族在相当长的时间跨度内的进化和变化提供了独特而有力的机会。凭借其最先进的设备，可以创建定制的数据集和代码本，包括将数据转换为代际和基于家庭的分析文件的可能性，PSID的数据档案已成为世界上最先进和最广泛使用的数据档案之一。拟议的活动包括：收集来自PSID家族的第三十五到第三十七波数据；不断完善问卷内容，以促进对当前和新出现的科学研究和政策问题的调查；为最先进的PSID网站和数据中心继续开发数据使用工具和资源，这将加快数据的处理和交付，并增强日益多学科的科学社区对数据的使用，而不考虑地理位置。继续从PSID家族中收集更多的数据，将通过提供关于人类和社会行为动态的更多信息，对加强科学理解作出广泛贡献。利用这些数据，研究人员可以系统地调查涉及生命周期机会和轨迹研究的各种科学学科中的无数问题。拥有一长组数据可以提高测量的精度，因为多个测量是在同一个家庭中收集的，也可以在几十年的时间里从多个家庭成员那里收集。延长的时间序列数据允许对稳健的因果模型进行估计，并支持对经济行为的研究，例如，通过改变商业周期过程中不同人群的工资变化等条件。此外，纵向数据便于进行队列分析，因为可以对不同时期的人进行比较。这些数据还有助于发展分析，因为早期经历可用于预测长期结果，例如根据早期生活经历预测成年后的收入和健康状况。此外，数据档案本身是一个有价值和强大的教育资源。基于网络的数据中心已经在大学本科和中学的课堂环境中使用，以说明科学方法的基本概念，包括数据的组成，结构，不同的数据如何联系在一起，以及如何使用统计方法分析数据以推断人类行为。通过具体的机制，如计算机显示实际数据并通过互联网对其进行操作，对这些抽象概念进行描绘，为当今精通计算机的学生提供了强大而易于理解的课程。网站上提供的教程已经在课堂上进行了测试，并用于进一步实现数据中心的教育使命。正如在整个申请书中所述，这些拟议活动的另一个广泛影响将是，通过为研究和教育创造最先进的工具，并使它们在互联网上免费提供给所有用户，而不考虑地理位置，从而最大限度地利用扩大的数据源。这种免费和开放的数据获取、易于使用的数据和数据工具，以及扩展的内容领域，将增加科学进步的机会，并促进一系列学科的教与学。拟议活动的智力价值包括研究的理论意义，这些研究是由扩大的数据档案在人类动态和发展的多学科领域取得的突破所产生的。项目团队非常有资格进行拟议的工作，所有团队成员平均有近10年的PSID工作经验。正如申请所描述的那样，所提出的活动实际上会增加科学知识的可能性很大。

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is the world's longest running nationally representative panel survey. With nearly forty years of data on the same families and their descendents, the PSID can justly be considered a cornerstone of the data infrastructure for empirically-based social science research in the US and the world. Through its long-term measures of economic and social well being, and based on its weighted, representative sample of US families, the study has compelled both researchers and policy makers to confront and learn from the dynamism inherent in social and behavioral processes. The long panel, genealogical blood-line, and broad content of the data represent a unique and powerful opportunity to study evolution and change within the same families over a considerable time span. With its state-of-the-art facility to create customized data sets and codebooks including the possibility of transforming data into intergenerational and family-based analytic files, PSID's data archive has become among the world's most advanced and heavily used. The proposed activities include: data collection of the thirty-fifth through thirty-seventh waves of data from the PSID families; the ongoing refinement of questionnaire content to facilitate the investigation of current and emerging scientific research and policy questions; and the continued development of data use tools and resources for the state-of-the-art PSID web site and data center that will expedite the processing and delivery of data, and enhance its use by an increasingly multidisciplinary scientific community, without regard for geography. Continuing to collect additional waves of data from the PSID families will contribute broadly to the enhancement of scientific understanding by providing additional information on the dynamics of human and social behavior. Using these data, researchers can systematically investigate a myriad of questions in a variety of scientific disciplines involving the study of life-cycle opportunities and trajectories over time. Having a long panel of data improves the precision of the measurement as multiple measures are collected within the same families as well as from multiple family members over a period of many decades. The extended time series of data allows the estimation of robust, causal models and supports the study of economic behavior, for example, through changing conditions such as wage variations for different populations during the course of business cycles. In addition, the longitudinal data facilitate the conduct of cohort analysis as persons from one time period to another may be compared. These data also facilitate developmental analysis, as early experiences may be used to predict longer-term outcomes, such as the prediction of income and health in adulthood from early-life experiences. Additionally, the data archive itself is a valuable and powerful educational resource. The webbased data center has been used in the classroom setting at the university undergraduate and secondary school levels to illustrate basic concepts in scientific methods, including the composition of data, how it is structured, how different data can be linked together, and how data can be analyzed to make inferences about human behavior using statistical methodologies. The portrayal of these abstract concepts via a concrete mechanism such as a computer display of actual data and its manipulation via the Internet makes a powerful and easy-to-understand lesson for today's computer-savvy students. The tutorials provided on the website have been tested in the classroom and are used to further implement the educational mission of the data center. As described throughout the application, another broad impact of these proposed activities will be to maximize the use of an expanded data source by creating state-of-the-art tools for research and education and making them available freely on the Internet to all users without regard to geographic location. This free and open access of the data, easy-to-use data and data tools, as well as expanded content domains, will increase the opportunities for scientific progress and promote teaching and learning across a range of disciplines. The intellectual merits of the proposed activities include the theoretical significance of research that results from breakthroughs made by the expanded data archive in the multidisciplinary areas of human dynamics and development. The project team is highly qualified to conduct the proposed work, with an average across all team members of nearly 10 years experience working on the PSID. The likelihood that the activities proposed will in fact result in increases in scientific knowledge is strong, as the application describes.