Bell Curve

Appendix 2Technical Issues Regarding theNational Longitudinal Survey ofYouthThis appendix provides details about the variables used in the text andabout other technical issues associated with the NLSY.' Colleagues whowish to recreate analyses will need additional information, which maybe obtained from the authors.'SURVEY YEAR, CONSTANT DOLLARS, AND SAMPLE WEIGHTSOur use of the NLSY extends through the 1990 survey year.'31All dollar figures are expressed in 1990 dollars, using the consumerprice index inflators as reported in the 1992 edition of Statistical Abstractof the United States, Table 737.Sample weights were employed in all analyses in the main text. Wedo not so note in each instance, to simplify the description. In computingscores that were based on the 11,878 subjects who had validscores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), we used thesampling weights specifically assigned for the AFQT population. Foranalyses based on the NLSY subjects' status as of a given year (usually1990), we used the sampling weights for that survey year. For analysesin which the children of NLSY women were the unit of analysis, thechild's sampling weights were used rather than the mother's.To make interpretation of the statistical significance easier, we replicatedall the analyses in Part I1 using just the unweighted cross-sectionalsample of whites, as reported in Appendix 4.