Commemorating the 50th anniversary of
the National Longitudinal Surveys
Former Research Associate and Associate Project Director of the NLS, Center for Human Resource Research, Ohio State University
NLS user since 1968
Nearly all that I know about the strengths and limitations of empirical research I learned from working with the NLS data in the 1960s and 1970s. A most important lesson is the necessity of understanding both what the data can and what it cannot tell one about the questions in which one is interested.
I began to work with the NLS almost at the inception of the data gathering and the preparation of the initial reports to the U.S. Department of Labor for the original cohorts, while a doctoral student in Economics at Ohio State University and a graduate research associate on the NLS Project there. The uniqueness of longitudinal data permitted exploration of answers to questions that theretofore had been examined only with cross-sectional data on people of different ages.