soss: Read and recode Michigan State of the State (SOSS) data

In childfree: Access and Harmonize Childfree Demographic Data

Read and recode Michigan State of the State (SOSS) data

Description

Read and recode Michigan State of the State (SOSS) data

Usage

soss(waves, extra.vars = NULL, progress = TRUE)

Arguments

waves	vector: a numeric vector containing the SOSS waves to include (currently available: 79, 82, 84, 85, 86)
extra.vars	vector: a character vector containing the names of variables to be retained from the raw data
progress	boolean: display a progress bar

Details

The State of the State Survey (SOSS) is regularly collected by the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) at Michigan State University (MSU). Each wave is collected from a sample of 1000 adults in the US state of Michigan, and includes sampling weights to obtain a sample that is representative of the state's population with respect to age, gender, race, and education. The soss() function reads the raw data from IPPSR's website, extracts and recodes selected variables useful for studying childfree adults and other family statuses, then returns an unweighted data frame. Questions necessary for identifying childfree adults have been asked in five waves, which each include unique questions that may be of interest:

• Wave 79 (May 2020) - Neighborhoods, Health care, COVID, Personality

• Wave 82 (September 2021) - Trust in government, Critical Race Theory

• Wave 84 (April 2022) - Trust in scientists, Autonomous vehicles, Morality

• Wave 85 (September 2022) - Reproductive rights, Race equity

• Wave 86 (December 2022) - Education, Infrastructure

Sampling weights

The SOSS includes sampling weights that can be incorporated into analyses using the survey package to obtain population-representative estimates. A svydesign object for a single wave can be created using survey::svydesign(data = data, ids = ~1, weights = ~weight).

Non-biological children

Non-biological children (e.g., adopted children, foster children, etc.) are treated the same as biological children when determining a respondent's family status. This matches the approach described by the ABC Framework (Neal & Neal, 2024). However, it can lead to discrepancies when comparing SOSS estimates to estimates derived from other data where information about non-biological children is not available.

Additional notes

• Wave 79 did not include a "do not know" option for selected questions. Therefore, it is not possible to identify "undecided" or "ambivalent non-parent" respondents. This may lead other family status categories to be inflated.

• Wave 82 originally included a 500 person oversample of parents, but they are excluded from nsfg(wave==82).

• The provided sampling weights are designed to be used in the analyses of individual waves. Combining data from multiple waves may require using adjusted weights.

Value

A data frame containing variables described in the codebook available using vignette("codebooks"). If you are offline, or if the requested data are otherwise unavailable, NULL is returned.

References

ABC Framework: Neal, Z. P. and Neal, J. W. (2024). A framework for studying adults who neither have nor want children. The Family Journal, 32, 121-130. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1177/10664807231198869")}

Examples

dat <- soss(waves = 86)  #Request data for December 2022
if (!is.null(dat)) {  #If data was available...
table(dat$famstat) / nrow(dat)  #Fraction of respondents with each family status
}

childfree documentation built on April 3, 2025, 6:15 p.m.