The Utility of the HOME-SF Scale for Child Development Research in a Large National Longitudinal Survey: The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort

This article highlights the wide range of social science research that can be carried out using the Home Observation and Measurement of the Environment-Short Form (HOME-SF) in a large scale nationally representative omnibus longitudinal survey-the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort. This evaluation examined the content of about 230 research papers that included more than 80 refereed journal articles across the disciplines of sociology, psychology, child health, and economics and focused in particular on how extensively the HOME assessment was utilized as an input or outcome in conjunction with a variety of other cognitive and socioemotional assessments. The most popular research topic using the HOME examines the varied dimensions of maternal employment and the many ways in which family and nonfamily antecedents link with child development. One other major area of research using this omnibus survey is the exploration of the many links among family poverty status, dimensions of the home envi...