Surveying Non-English Speakers in the ECLS

• Activity Number: 62
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Monday, August 12, 2002 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section*
• Author(s): Brad Edwards*+
• Affiliation(s): Westat, Inc.
• Keywords: childhood ; language minorities ; surveys

Abstract

Language minority families present special challenges for the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study's Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Data collection methods include CAPI interviews with parents, direct assessments of children, self-administered paper questionnaires for fathers, and CATI interviews with child care providers. About 2,000 Asian, 1800 Hispanic, and 1000 American Indian births will be included in a national sample of about 15,000 children born throughout 2001. Our approach to language minority issues is to make every reasonable effort to include these families in the study, to collect their data without compromising quality in any major way, and to be sensitive to cultural differences presented by these families. At the same time, we must be mindful of the fixed resources available to the project and make the best tradeoffs we can to reach out to minority language families without jeopardizing the overall study design. We have developed specific criteria and decision rules, so that the procedures for including language minority families are not arbitrary and their data are collected in a standardized manner.

Spanish speakers are by far the largest language minority group.