Nature published a special issue on data sharing in September, examining the “cultural and technical hurdles that can get in the way of good intentions.”

A preliminary 2008-2009 Demographic and Health Surveys report shows that Kenya’s fertility rate has decline slightly, from 4.9 births per woman in 2003 to 4.6, according to an article from the Daily Nation (Kenya).

Data from the 2008-2009 survey is not yet available.

A study using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) found that nearly half of American children and 90% of black kids will be on food stamps at some point. See the Associated Press story.

Source: Rank, M.R., & Hirschl, T.A. (2009). Estimating the Risk of Food Stamp Use and Impoverishment During Childhood. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. 163(11):994-999.

Area Resource File 2007 is now available for download from the SodaPop website.  PRI Affiliates can also access the file directly on the network.

Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS II) follow-up data (2004-2006) is available from ICPSR.

PRI has MIDUS 1995-1996 data in our archive, but we do not have the most recent corrected version and we do not have MIDUS II. PRI affiliates can access these data files directly from ICPSR or request that they be added to the archive by contacting the data archivist.

The PRI Library has received announcement of the ninth Add Health Data User Conference, to be held July 22-23, 2010 in Bethesda, MD.

Restricted National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data will soon be managed by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

Existing data contracts will not experience any interruption, but any requests for contract renewals or changes will be handled by ICPSR after Dec. 15, 2009. A moratorium on new contracts is in place from Oct. 30, 2009 to January 2010 when the new online restricted data request system is scheduled to be in place.

For more information, see the Add Health announcement. PRI researchers: please contact the data archivist if you have any questions.

TIME Magazine features research by nutritionists using Add Health Romantic Pairs data showing that married people are much more likely than those who are dating to gain weight.

See also: The, N. S., & Gordon-Larsen, P. (2009). Entry into romantic partnership is associated with obesity. Obesity.

Fragile Families (FF) Baseline, One-Year, and Three-Year Core files were updated and re-released in May 2008. Three-Year In-Home files were updated and re-released in March 2009.

Five-Year Core and In-Home files are also now available.

These data can be downloaded from the Princeton Office for Population Research.

If you are a PRI affiliate and would like updated or new files to be added to the SodaPop FF data collection, please contact the data archivist.

New versions of all data in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) collections have been updated in SodaPop.

The NLSY79 files are from the April 2008 release.

The NLSY97 files are from the June 2009 release.