CHICAGO HEALTH AND SOCIAL LIFE SURVEY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Number
Overview and Conventions (How to use this codebook) ………………………………………….. 1
SECTION 1 DEMOGRAPHY ...... ……………… 9
SECTION 2 NUMBER OF PARTNERS IN LAST 12 MONTHS,
LISTING OF TWO MOST RECENT PARTNERS, AND
QUESTIONS FOR PERSONS WITH NO PARTNERS EVER……………….. 28
SECTION 3 TWO MOST RECENT PARTNERS,
DETAILED QUESTIONS ...... ………………. 32
SECTION 3.6 REMAINING PARTNERS IN LAST 12 MONTHS FOR
RESPONDENTS WITH MORE THAN 2 ...... …………………. 61
SECTION 5 SOCIAL NETWORK ...... …………….. 64
SECTION 6 CHILDHOOD SEXUAL EXPERIENCES ...... …………………. 72
SECTION 7 FIRST SEX ...... …………… 74
SECTION 9 LIFETIME PARTNERS ...... ……………… 79
SECTION 10 FORCED SEX ...... ………….…. 82
SECTION 11 NEIGHBORHOOD ...... ……………… 88
SECTION 13 HEALTH ...... ……………. 92
SECTION 15 ATTITUDES ...... …………….. 99
SECTION 3.5 SAQ ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ...... ………………… 102
SECTION 8 SAQ ON SEXUAL ORIENTATION ...... …………………. 106
SECTION 12 SAQ FOR MALE/FEMALE RESPONDENTS ...... ……………………. 110
SECTION 16 RESPONDENT COMMENTS ...... ……………….. 114
SECTION 17 INTERVIEWER COMMENTS ...... ………………… 115
THIS INTERVIEW WAS FIELDED IN 1995 FOR THE NEIGHBORHOODS OF L-SIDE*, SOUTHTOWN* AND SHORELAND*
AND FOR THE COOK COUNTY CROSS-SECTION. THE ERLINDA* SAMPLE WAS FIELDED IN LATE FALL OF 1996 AND IN 1997. THE ACTUAL SURVEY WAS ADMINISTERED ON LAPTOP COMPUTERS. THIS DOCUMENT WAS LAST REVISED SEPTEMBER 11, 1998.
*All pseudonyms
Overview and Conventions
This questionnaire was administered via computer assisted personal interview (CAPI) technology, meaning that the instrument was programmed onto laptops and there was no hardcopy instrument as such. This document is our best approximation of the actual survey, but necessarily shows some differences in format due to being in paper and pencil format. Thus, where you see text substitutions for gender (his/her) or tense (are/were) or names of referent persons (PARTNER1) or (MOTHER SUBSTITUTE), the actual survey did not show these same options but provided the correct option based on answers to prior questions. The CAPI program used was not able to produce a hardcopy version suitable for use as a codebook. The document you are reading was created by typing in question text from the screen dumps that the program did produce. Actual screen dumps could not be used because they contain programming language as well as the text of the question, and because response codes are in separate files and not included with the text of the question. We have done our best to catch any errors in this document; nevertheless, because it is NOT the actual instrument, some typographical errors may remain. In particular, some codes may be mistyped – our convention for the CAPI questionnaire was to code all NO answers as 0 and all YES answers as 1, but in editing this document we found some places where these codes were mistyped as 1 and 2. Similarly, the CAPI convention was to code responses to questions about genders of partners as 1 for MALE and 2 for FEMALE, but editing caught a few cases mistakenly typed in as 0 and 1. So, while we have tried to carefully check the codes, it is a long and complex instrument and typographical errors may remain. In the event you do discover an inconsistency between the range of codes printed in this manual and the range found in the data, the data are correct and not the codebook.
Throughout the codebook are bold-faced question numbers (all beginning with Q) and variable names. The “Q” question numbers refer to screens in the CAPI program. Due to substantial revision during the pretest phase, these numbers often fail to match the numbers in regular type found next to the questions. Instructions for skips typically refer to the non-bolded question numbers. Further, the section numbers do not come in orderly numerical sequence due to a decision to group all self-administered portions of the questionnaire together at the end rather than to intersperse them throughout the questionnaire as originally planned. Renumbering all the questions and sections was impractical at the time the decision was made, so the numbers remain out of sequence.
Throughout the questionnaire, all reserved codes are negative and are designated by:
-4 Legitimate Skip
-3 Missing
-2 Don’t Know
-1 Refused
The –4 code means that the CAPI program skipped the respondent past the question. The skip may be logical (we don’t ask persons who never had sex how many times they ever got pregnant, e.g.) or it may have been due to time constraints – some questions were only asked of respondents in the neighborhood samples, for example. In addition, there were a certain number of poorly programmed skips that result in missing data. The –3 code means the question is missing due to interviewer error. Because the survey was programmed, there are few cases where the interviewer could have inadvertently skipped questions, since some response was needed in order to bring up the next screen. However, in the network section, interviewers had to perform a few manual edits on lists, and here interviewer error was possible. One common problem in this section was that interviewers failed to eliminate duplicate names listed on both the free time and discussion lists, which resulted in the collection of duplicate data. We deleted this duplicate information and substituted blanks rather than – to indicate that the interviewer error did not result in a loss of data. Further, in character fields following the choice of an “OTHER, SPECIFY” option, interviewers may have failed to enter any text specifying what the other response was. In this last case, a blank substitutes for a –3.
You should note when using these data that many questions do not have full responses from all respondents for a given item, even though all appropriate cases were asked the question. This occurs because we did not wish to ask respondents the same question more than one time. Thus, for persons who only had one sexual partner in the past year, we only ask about frequency of sex with that partner in the past twelve months and skip them past the earlier question about frequency of sex altogether in the past twelve months since these should amount to the same thing. For persons with more than one partner in the past twelve months, however, both questions are asked – frequency of sex in general in the past twelve months AND frequency of sex with each of the most recent two partners in the past twelve months. Thus, in order to construct a variable for frequency of sex in the past twelve months, you need to look at three variables: number of partners in the past twelve months (PART12), frequency of sex in the past twelve months (SEXFREQ) and frequency of sex with the most recent partner in the past twelve months (P1OFTEN). Persons with no partners in the past twelve months have a frequency of zero, persons with only one partner in the past twelve months have a frequency indicated by P1OFTEN and persons with two or more partners in the past twelve months have a frequency indicated by SEXFREQ. On the face of it, the SEXFREQ variable looks as though it will provide the measure for the full sample, but when you look at the skip pattern, you realize this is not the case. For some of the more complicated basic variables (such as relationship status at the time of interview) we have already constructed unified variables. These variables are noted as constructed variables and thus are not associated with a single question, but were constructed from a variety of items throughout the survey.
In many questions, there is an “OTHER, SPECIFY” option. The verbatim responses to these are named as variables beginning with OT and then using the CAPI screen item number, such as OT11_7F. These are character fields and contain the text typed in during the interview. All “OTHER, SPECIFY” questions have been recoded into the main variable where indicated, even where there is a response in the associated character field. For example, if somebody said “Grandfather” in an “OTHER, SPECIFY” field, but one of the original main categories was RELATIVE OF R, then this case would be moved into the RELATIVE OF R category, but the text “Grandfather” would be left in the associated OT character field. When OT fields did not provide additional information – sometimes we had responses in these fields identical to existing pre-coded categories – then the response was simply coded back into the main category and removed from the OT field. In this way, you can be confident that the distribution of the main variable reflects all the information we had from that question, including the OT fields. Please note that all “OT” variables are not included in the public use data file.
For character fields, a blank substitutes for a –3. Thus, where an “OTHER, SPECIFY” response is indicated, but there is no text in the character field that accompanies such responses, the interviewer failed to ask for or failed to enter what the specified other answer was. This means that the frequencies in the category “OTHER” for the main variable may not match the frequencies of the OT field. There are some cases with an “OTHER” response marked that have blank OT fields. And, because some original “OTHER” responses were recoded into different response categories based on the content of the OT field, some cases without an “OTHER” response may have responses in an OT field. If there is an OT variable for one or several loops of a question, but not all loops, this means that the loops for which the OT variable is missing had no "OTHER, SPECIFY” responses in that loop. We left the “OTHER, SPECIFY” option in this document to show where this response was allowed, but for some of these, no OT variable was created because there were no cases.
There are a number of places throughout the questionnaire where we asked for a date or an age at which something first or most recently occurred. When we gave the respondent the option of giving us either an age or a date, we later converted ages to years and years to ages so as to have these variables in both forms for all respondents with valid answers. For such variables, there are three variables for each response – one that ends in ORG, one that ends in YR and one that ended in AGE. For example, the year of most recent sex with most recent sexual partner appears as SP1MRORG SP1MRYR and SP1MRAGE. The “ORG” variable tells you how this information was originally collected, as age or year. The YR variable is a combination of years originally collected and ages collected and converted into years. The AGE variable is a combination of ages originally collected and years collected and converted into ages.
These data were collected from five separate samples: Cook County, Shoreland, L-Side, Erlinda and Southtown (community area names are pseudonyms). The variable SAMPLE shows 6 codes, designating which respondents lived in the City of Chicago proper and which lived in Suburban Cook County. These two groups were drawn as a single sample, however. It is useful to have a dummy variable that distinguishes between suburban and city residents, but the cases in samples 1 and 2 are not individually representative of Suburban Cook County and the City of Chicago respectively; rather, they are jointly representative of residents of Cook County as a whole and should be used as a single sample.
The variable SAMPWGT is a raked case weight. This means that it both corrects for sampling bias and weights the cases to match census percentages of males and females of various age groups and by race/ethnicity. Since women respond to surveys at a higher rate than do men – we got about 60% women and 40% men – a weighting procedure was needed to make the cases representative of the underlying population. This weight was calculated in such a way as to preserve the correct number of actual cases. The four neighborhood samples were simple random samples of households, while the cross-section was a clustered sample. The variable ELIGIBLE gives the number of persons aged 18-59 living in the household.
Throughout the survey, the convention for interviewers was that items printed in upper/lower case were to be read aloud, while those in ALL CAPS were not to be read aloud, but were instructions to interviewers. To distinguish between the instructions to interviewers (ALL CAPS) and the text of the questionnaire (upper/lower case), both of which appeared on CAPI screens during the interview, and the codebook notes that did not appear in the original CAPI interview, the latter are in italics. Nothing in italics was part of the text of the original CAPI questionnaire.
The CAPI survey was programmed by CHRR at Ohio State University. Programming errors resulted in the loss of data at various points in the questionnaire and this is noted in the codebook.
To prevent inadvertent disclosure of respondent identity, a number of variables have been excluded from the public use data file. Information about obtaining access to these restricted variables can be obtained by contacting the Social Science Research Computing Center Data Archive at the University of Chicago ( or (773)-834-0150).
Section 1: Demography
Question / Subject / Variable Names / AlternativeQ1-2 / Date of Birth / BIRDAY, BIRMTH, BIRYEAR / AGE
Q1-3a / State of Birth / BORNST / BORNRG
Q1-10C / Mother's State of Birth / MABORNST / MABORNRG
Q1-10D / Mother's County of Birth / MABORNCT / MABORNCTY
Q1-66A / Protestant Denomination at Age 14 / DENOM14
Q1-67B / Protestant Denomination / DENOM
Q1-87 / Where R Works in Chicago Area / WORKWHER / SITES1-SITES12
Q1-87a / Neighborhood where R works / WORKHOOD
Q1-87b / Suburb where R works / WORKSUB
Q1-88 / Work Crossstreet #1 / WRKSTR1
Q1-88a / Work Cross-Street #2 / WRKSTR2
Q1-92 / Working Wage / WAGE / RINCOME
Q1-92a / Wage Periodicity / WAGEPER
Q1-92a / Hours Per Day for Wage / HRPERDAY
Q1-92c / Wage per Week / WAGEWEEK
Section 3: Two Most Recent Sexual Partners
Q3-11.1 / Currently Married to Partner #1 / P1CURMAR / P1MARSTQ3-11a.1 / Month/Year Married Partner #1 / P1CMMTH, P1CMYR / P1MARYR
Q3-11ba.1 / Formerly Married to Partner #1 / P1EVRMAR / P1MARST
Q3-11c.1 / Month/Year Married Partner #1 / P1EMMTH, P1EMYR / P1MARYR
Q3-11d.1 / How marriage to Partner #1 ended / P1SEP / P1MARST
Q3-11d2.1 / Month/Year Divorce Finalized Partner #1 / P1DIVMTH, P1DIVYR / P1DURMAR
Q3-11d3.1 / Month/Year Partner Died Partner #1 / P1DIEMTH, P1DIEYR / P1DURMAR
Q3-29.1 / Where R Met Partner #1 / P1MEET
Q3-34.1 / Partner #1 Country of Birth / P1BORNCT / P1BORNCTY
Q3-39a.1 / Partner #1 Residence / P1RESID
Q3-39aa.1 / Neighborhood where Partner #1 Lives / P1NHOOD
Q3-39e.1 / Cross-Street #1 for Partner #1 / P1STR1
Q3-39ee.1 / Cross-Street #2 for Partner #1 / P1STR2
Q3-39c.1 / Suburb where Partner #1 Lives / P1SUBURB
Q3-40c.1 / Partner #1 Denomination / P1DENOM
Q3-11.2 / Currently Married to Partner #2 / P2CURMAR / P2MARST
Q3-11a.2 / Month/Year Married Partner #2 / P2CMMTH, P2CMYR / P2MARYR
Q3-11ba.2 / Formerly Married to Partner #2 / P2EVRMAR / P2MARST
Q3-11c.2 / Month/Year Married Partner #2 / P2EMMTH, P2EMYR / P2MARYR
Q3-11d.2 / How marriage with Partner #2 ended / P2SEP / P2MARST
Q3-11d2.2 / Month/Year Divorce Finalized Partner #2 / P2DIVMTH, P2DIVYR / P2DURMAR
Q3-11d3.2 / Month/Year Partner #2 Died / P2DIEMTH, P2DIEYR / P2DURMAR
Q3.29.2 / Where R Met Partner #2 / P2MEET
Q3-34.2 / Partner #2 Country of Birth / P2BORNCT / P2BORNCTY
Section 3: Two Most Recent Sexual Partners {Continued}
Question / Subject / Variable Names / Alternative
Q3-39a.2 / Partner #2 Residence / P2RESID
Q3-39aa.2 / Neighborhood where Partner #2 Lives / P2NHOOD
Q3-39e.2 / Cross-Street #1 for Partner #2 / P2STR1
Q3-39ee.2 / Cross-Street #2 for Partner #2 / P2STR2
Q3-39c.2 / Suburb where Partner #2 Lives / P2SUBURB
Q3-40c.2 / Partner #2 Denomination / P2DENOM
Q3-90b.1 / Chicago Neighborhood where R Visits to meet potential partners / MEETHOOD
Q3-91b.1 / Chicago Suburb where R Visits to meet potential partners / MEETSUB
Q3-91D.1 / Cross-Street #1 / MEETSTR1
Q3-91e.1 / Cross-Street #2 / MEETSTR2
Q3-90a.1 / Where R goes to meet possible Partners / MEETSPOT
Q3-90b.1 / Chicago Neighborhood where R goes to meet potential partners / MEETHOOD
Q3-91.1 / Chicago Suburb where R goes to meet potential partners. / MEETSUB
Q3-91d.1 / Cross-Street #1 where R meets potential partners / MEETSTR1
Q3-91e.1 / Cross-Street #2 where R meets potential partners / MEETSTR2
Part 2 Section 5: Social Network
Q5a-18a.* / Neighborhood where social network persons live / NPHOOD1-NPHOOD6Q5a-18e.* / Neighborhood cross-street #1 / NPSTRT1-NPSTRT6
Q5a-18f.* / Neighborhood cross-street #2 / NPSTRT2-NPSTRT6
Q5a.18b.* / Suburban Residence of social network persons / NPBURB1-NBBURB6
Part 3 Section 9: Lifetime Partners
Q9-11 / Month R First Married / MAR1MTHSection 11: Neighborhood
Question / Subject / Variable Names / AlternativeQ11-7 / Chicago neighborhood where R spends freetime / FREEHOOD
Q11-7F / Suburb where R spends free time / FREESUB
Q11-7D / Cross-street #1 where R spends free time / FTAVE1
Q11-7E / Cross-street #2 where R spends free time / FTAVE2
Q11-27 / What R calls his/her neighborhood / *******
PART 1: THIS IS PART ONE -- DEMOGRAPHY