Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP): Core Questions on Disability

In an exploration of Census Bureau statistics on disabilities, I wanted to examine the questions that were asked in the most recent panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).  A SIPP Data page at the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) seemed to indicate that results from the 2008 panel were only starting to come out.  Similarly, at the Bureau's own SIPP website, a 2008 Panel SIPP Data Product Schedule indicated that, as of March 2010, Waves 1-4 of the 2008 Panel were to have been completed, but only the Wave 1 data were actually supposed to be available.

The Census Bureau indicates that the SIPP consists of core content plus topical modules.  At present, the most recent core content shown on the Bureau's Core Content webpage is that of the 2004 Panel.  That is, the 2008 questionnaire did not appear there; this seemed to be one of several Bureau webpages that seemed not to be maintained currently.  I went back to that NBER webpage, went down to the 2008 Panel listings, and saw that there was not yet a PDF file listed on the 2008 Wave 1 Core row.  I took a look into the 08w1.zip file listed next to it, but when I unzipped it I saw that it contained only a .dat file suitable for opening in a statistics program like SPSS.

I went looking for the 2008 Panel questionnaire.  On the Bureau's SIPP User Guide webpage, I found this statement:

We are currently updating the Third Edition, 2001. The revised chapters include information on the 2001 Panel, 2004 Panel and current up-to-date information on the 2008 Panel. All chapters are currently being revised.

I opened the SIPP Users' Guide, Third Edition, 2001 PDF.  It seemed to contain a lot of useful information, but not an actual copy of any questionnaires.  This was not surprising; the 2004 questionnaires, with instructions and all, had been several hundred pages long.  I found another page, described as the SIPP FTP page, and it offered several files related to the 2008 Panel -- some data files, and also some technical text files -- but no copies of the 2008 questionnaire.  I found the reason in a footnote (p. 16, n. 11) to a Census Bureau Research Report by Moore et al. (2009), "The 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation Event History Calendar Field Test:  Study Design and Initial Results."  That footnote referred to the "automated" SIPP questionnaire.  This explained the odd format I had seen in the 2004 questionnaires:  they had apparently been attempting to replicate, on paper, the different decisions that a computer program would make, regarding which questions to ask next, based on what the respondent said.

Revising my search, I found a reference to AttA - W1 Core Items Booklet.pdf in a RegInfo.gov webpage.  RegInfo.gov, apparently maintained by the Regulatory Information Service Center, turned out to be a repository of materials currently under review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  In length and format, the W1 Core Items Booklet was very similar to the 2004 questionnaires that I had downloaded earlier (above).  Unfortunately, it was dated August 22, 2007, which meant that it might not have presented the final set of questions that were actually posed to the 2008 Panel.  I searched for "W1 Core Items Booklet" and found another entry at RegInfo.gov with what appeared to be the same PDF document.  On a webpage at GovPulse.us, which appeared to be a website set up by three people who wanted to make the Federal Register more searchable, I found an indication that the Census Bureau was requesting OMB review of the Wave 6 topical modules for the 2008 Panel, with this statement:  "The core SIPP and reinterview instruments were cleared under Authorization No. 0607-0944."  A search for that authorization led to a different RegInfo.gov page, bearing the appealing certification date of January 28, 2010.  This webpage indicated that the relevant Information Collection Review (ICR) pertained to something known as the SIPP 2008 Panel Survey Instruments; and when I clicked on that link, I found myself back at the original RegInfo.gov webpage.  It seemed, in short, that the W1 Core Items Booklet dated August 22, 2007 seemed to be the final 2008 Panel Core Questionnaire.

I searched that 2008 Panel Core Questionnaire for references to "disability" and its cognates.  I found a number of such references.  I found no references to "impair" or its cognates in this Core Questionnaire, however, and the references to disability tended to be using accepted terminology rather than defining it -- referring, for instance, to "disability compensation," "disability insurance," and "disability benefits."  Because the SIPP is oriented toward income and benefits that people receive, it appears that it may be possible at least to use the data from its Core Questionnaire to make estimates about the portion of its target population for which disability affects the ability to work.  Whether that would prove necessary seemed to depend on what I could learn from SIPP's disability-related topical questionnaires.

Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP): Topical Questions on Disability

My search for disability statistics led me to the 314-page 2008 Panel Core Questionnaire for the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).  While the Core Questionnaire did have some disability-related questions, those questions tended not to ask about the nature or extent of a disability; the concern was, rather, with whether the disability interfered with (or was perhaps the source of) the respondent's income and benefits.  It seemed that disability-oriented topical questions posed to the SIPP's 2008 Panel of respondents would shed more light on the nature and extent of disabilities experienced by people in the United States.

As with the Core Questionnaires, the Census Bureau's SIPP website did not provide ready links to its Topical Module Questionnaires after 2004.  Fortunately, the 2008 Panel SIPP Data Product Schedule found on one of the pages in that website indicated that data collection for the Work Disability History module was scheduled to take place as part of Wave 2, in January through April 2009, and that the corresponding data products were expected to be released in April 2010.  Data collection for the other disability-related Topical Modules, Functional Limitations and Disability for adults and children, was scheduled to take place as part of Wave 6, in summer 2010, with data products being released in September 2011.

By pleasant coincidence, the 2008 Panel Wave 6 Topical Modules seemed to be included on the same RegInfo.gov page from which I had previously obtained the 2008 Panel Core Questionnaire, so it was easy to get the Wave 6 modules.  The link provided on that page produced an 82-page Wave 6 Topical Modules Items Booklet, in which the Functional Limitations and Disability section ran from pages 31 to 53.  A preliminary look at some of these questions confirmed that they were not at all limited to income production, as had been the case with disability-related questions in the Core Questionnaire.

The remaining step was to find the Wave 2 Topical Modules Booklet that would hopefully include the Work Disability History module.  A search led to a Federal Register entry that cited the same OMB Control Number 0607-0944 that had applied to the 2008 Panel Core Questionnaire.  A search for that number led to a different RegInfo.gov page, where I downloaded a 2008 Panel Wave 2 Topical Modules Items Booklet, in which the Work Disability Topical Module appeared on pages 1 through 5 (PDF pages 3 through 7).  As the "work disability" moniker suggests, the questions in this module appeared to be oriented toward disabilities that interfered with work.

My ultimate purpose, in this pursuit, was to become informed on defensible ways of estimating the numbers of persons with disabilities in a particular location.  The page counts (above) told me that I was likely to get a more extensive treatment of disability concepts in the Wave 6 Topical Module, and it also seemed that that module's questions would take a broader perspective on the meaning of disability.  In a subsequent post, I look more closely into that module.