How are the data files structured?
The data are structured as one record per child. Mother and father data are in separate files. There are records for all 4,898 mothers and fathers at each wave, regardless of whether they were interviewed. Mother and father data can be merged using the IDNUM variable. Flag variables ( e.g. CF1FINT, CM2MINT, CF2FINT) indicate whether or not a mother/father was interviewed at a given wave (all mothers were interviewed at baseline so there is no CM1MINT variable). Cases not interviewed are coded as -9 “Not in wave” on all other variables. There are also flag variables (e.g. CM1FINT, CM2FINT and CF2MINT) on the mothers’ and fathers’ records indicate whether the corresponding mother or father was interviewed at the time of the follow-up.
