WLS Codebooks

Note: Codebooks contain frequency data from the private data release. For some variables, these differ from the frequencies in the public release. Variables that differ between the public and private versions include "(not available on public release)" as part of the variable description, or a note indicating the difference between the public and private versions.

Phone: Psychological Well-Being

This section contains total scores and number of questions answered for 
the Psychological Well-Being Scale: autonomy, environmental mastery, 
personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and
self-acceptance.

NOTE: Most variables in this section were recreated for the 3/98 release 
      of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study: 1993/94 Sibling Telephone and 
      Mail Surveys - WLS23S_2

NOTE: If using the psychological well-being items from both the telephone
      and mail surveys (WLS23SM), note the different coding schemes used for 
      the two instruments.

NOTE: For siblings who were also in the original WLS graduate sample, the
      values for the following variables were taken from the 1992/93 Graduate
      Phone Interview (and hence the source variables often include
      corresponding variables with prefix "RN").


sn001re            Was this respondent randomly selected to answer 
                   psychological variables.
sn002red,sn003red  Total score for autonomy and number of autonomy questions
                   answered.
sn004red,sn005red  Total score for environmental mastery and number
                   of environmental mastery questions answered.
sn006red,sn007red  Total score for personal growth and number of 
                   personal growth questions answered.
sn008red,sn009red  Total score for positive relations with others
                   and number of positive relations questions answered. 
sn010red,sn011red  Total score for purpose in life and number of
                   purpose in life questions answered.
sn012red,sn013red  Total score for self-acceptance and number of
                   self-acceptance questions answered.
sn014red,sn015red  Total score for psychological well-being
                   and number of psychological well-being questions answered.
sn016rec-sn027rec  Individual questions for the psychological well-being
                   scale.

NOTE:  In releases prior to 3/98, if the respondent answered "neither agree 
       or disagree" to an individual component of the well-being scale, 
       it was treated as missing data along with "don't know", or refused.
       The updated total scores (sn002red-sn015red) assign a mid-point (4) to 
       the "neither agree or disagree" response.  The individual questions 
       (sn016rec-sn027rec) have also been recoded to 4 for the  "neither 
       agree nor disagree" category.  This differs from coding of similar 
       items in the XPERS module.  See Change Notice #13 for details.

NOTE:  Because the unfolding technique was used to ask these questions 
       (see flowchart for question format) there are a few cases where 
       someone initially answered agree or disagree but in the follow up
       question did not state an intensity of this dis/agreement.  In
       these cases, the response was coded as either "don't know" or
       "refused" depending on the respondent's answer.

NOTE:  See Appendix K - COR574A and COR437 for details regarding creation 
       of the psychological well-being scores.

NOTE:  Variables np001rec-np068rer in WLS23SM contain more detailed
       variables measuring the same concepts.

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