Computer and Internet Use Supplement and Proxy

1

A reviewer for our paper using the data for the Computer and Internet Use Supplement asked about:
1a. What is the percent of proxies in the CPS Computer and Internet Use Supplement survey households? (also broken down by age group).

  1. What is the breakdown in proxy types? e.g., parent, spouse, sibling, grandparent, other relative, room renter, etc.

Where can I get the answers to these questions?

2

Information about proxy responses for the Computer and Internet Use Supplement is complicated, for two reasons:

  1. While this supplement is offered at the person level, some of the variables are actually about the household. For example, CINONET (Main reason household does not have internet access) is actually a household-level variable and, as such, none of the responses are really proxy responses.

  2. The survey design varies across available years a great deal. In some samples it seems that the supplement respondent is also the basic monthly sample household respondent and this person answers questions for all household members. In other samples, the household respondent is a proxy for all respondents for some variables and answers only for themselves in others. In still other samples, the supplement respondent is a randomly selected household member rather than the household head. Some samples have proxy response flags in the supplement data, while others do not.

Due to the complications listed above, we do not currently offer a variable that provides information about proxy response. You may be able to find more information about proxy information by sample in the supplement codebooks.