soss {childfree}

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 a single data frame. Questions necessary for identifying childfree adults were 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

Weights

The survey package can be used to incorporate sampling weights and obtain population-representative estimates by wave. After using soss() to obtain data for a given wave (see example below), use dat <- svydesign(data = dat, ids = ~1, weights = ~weight) to incorporate information about the survey design.

Known issues

• 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. These respondents are omitted if wave == 82.

Value

A data frame containing variables described in the codebook available using vignette("codebooks")

Examples

data <- soss(waves = 84, extra.vars = c("neal1"))