Published Sources of Statistics on the Family

The family scholar with an interest in policy analysis in the United States need not expend a great deal of time or effort to obtain very comprehensive data relevant to policy issues. Agencies of the Federal Government regularly collect and publish vast sets of statistics which cover a variety of marriage and family topics and which await exploitation for secondary analysis. To date, many researchers and educators have remained unaware of the existence of such statistics, their content, and their relatively easy accessibility. Family policy researchers can put the available data to use in a variety of ways, three of which deserve special mention. First, government statistics, gathered over time, frequently provide the only indicators of change in marital and family characteristics of the population. Sometimes, trend data afford the opportunity to assess policy impacts, at least on an aggregate level, as when measures of some dependent variable have been taken for a number of years before and after a policy innovation. Second, available statistics can be organized to portray the social conditions which produce a need for specific policies. The number of families with single parents, or in poverty, or with a dependent older member, for example, can be readily ascertained and entered into the discussion of a proposed piece of legislation. Third, available government statistics frequently offer the sole source for making predictive statements concerning the likely impacts of proposed policies. In the real world, there is rarely enough time prior to a policy decision for the careful design and execution of a study which will identify the most probable outcomes of a new piece of legislation. The analyst, called for an expert opinion, must use professional wisdom in making statements about the effects of a proposed law. Expert opinion can become more reliable when the analyst can make some inferences, even if indirect, about policy consequences based on available statistics. Of course, some characteristics of government data can make secondary analysis of them for policy research quite difficult. For example: definitions of variables sometimes differ among agencies which collect similar data; definitions of variables and of units of analysis sometimes change over time, even within the same agency; all of the variables necessary for rigorous testing of a hypothesis are not always included in government surveys; data may not be collected over uniform periods of time; and so on. Nonetheless, the low cost, easy access, and relevant content of many government statistics render them extremely attractive to the family scholar. This article presents an overview of some major sets of policy-related statistics available in published form at little or no cost. The overview of statistical sources is intended to

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• Family Impact Analysis

  Open Access•Marcia C Ory•Policy Studies Journal•1980

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