The Future of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (1993) / Chapter Skim
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SUMMARY
SUMMARY
Pages 1-12
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From page 1... ...
The questionnaire for each interview wave includes a core questionnaire about income, employment, and program participation and one or more supplemental modules on related topics. Funding cutbacks hindered the development of this highly complex survey in its early years, but SIPP is now clearly established as an important source of information for federal policy making and social science research.
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The panel drew on the work of an interim assessment of SIPP, performed by CNSTAT in 1989, which focused on federal agency uses of the data; consulted widely with users both inside and outside federal agencies; and conducted its own assessments of SIPP. Our report covers the following aspects of SIPP: the survey's goals and their implications for content and the relationship of SIPP to other surveys and administrative record data sources; survey and sample design; data colleciion and processing; publications and other data products; analytical methods for using the complex longitudinal data from SIPP; methodological research and evaluation needed to plan and evaluate the SIPP redesign; and the management and oversight of the SIPP program.
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SIPP was developed-to provide added information and remedy deficiencies in the March income supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) , which for decades has been the primary source of the nation's income and poverty statistics.
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We support both of these initiatives, which should lead to improvements in data quality and timeliness of data products. We encourage the Census Bureau to identify CAPI and database management systems that incorporate all of the features necessary to handle the complex SIPP data.
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, measuring the duration of spells of poverty and program participation, and treating missing interviews. Because the issues involved in developing appropriate statistics from SIPP are so complex, we urge the Census Bureau to ensure that the analysis staff are able not only to prepare publications, but also to undertake an ongoing research program and keep up to date with regard to relevant analytical techniques and policy concerns.
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We recommend that the Bureau establish a high-level position of project director with full responsibility for its income statistics program, including both SIPP and the March CPS income supplement. The project director needs to combine relevant substantive expertise with strong survey management skills and have a sufficiently large staff to guide the program, prepare reports and analyses, and address analytical concepts and methods.
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Recommendation 3-3: SIPP should develop, on an experimental basis, selected measures of economic security against risk, such as access to credit. Recommendation 3-4: Priorities for improved measures of program participation and eligibility from SIPP should include improving the range and frequency of information needed to determine eligibility for major assistance programs and providing adequate measures of spells of both eligibility and participation.
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Recommendation 3-6: SIPP should become, over time, the primary source of the nation's income statistics in place of the March CPS income supplement. SIPP should receive priority for major investments to develop improved income measures.
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Recommendation 5-3: In view of the major advances that continue to occur in computing hardware and software, the Census Bureau should devote significant resources to continued education and training of its data processing staff. In particular, the SIPP processing staff should take advantage of the experience of other data processing facilities outside the Census Bureau that deal with longitudinal surveys.
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The Census Bureau should also establish a research report series to include in-depth analytical and methodological studies of special topics related to income and program participation. Data sources for these studies could include in addition to SIPP the March CPS income supplement and other surveys and administrative records.
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; and · a quick-response capability to address unanticipated problems with the implementation of the redesign. Recommendation 7-2: The Census Bureau should undertake continuous monitoring of error levels in present and future SIPP panels and regularly provide information on errors to users, in periodic updates of the SIPP Quality Profile and other publications.
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The person who fills this position should have recognized substantive expertise in topics related to income, poverty, and assistance programs, combined with strong survey management skills. Recommendation 8-2: We support the Census Bureau's efforts to obtain outside advice about the SIPP program and encourage the Bureau to further strengthen its advisory mechanisms.
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