Category: Variation

The best data analyses start with well-formed analytic questions. Therefore, before you set out to study your system’s administrative data—whether you are doing so with the Data Center’s web tool, your state’s complete longitudinal file, or any other dataset—it is important to spend time at the front end making sure that you’ve identified exactly what it is you want to know. What is your question? Which group of children will you need to examine in order to answer it? And what type of data will get you the answer that you are looking for? Longitudinal analyses of foster care data center around two main components—the likelihood of events and the speed with which they happen. In other words, good longitudinal inquiries are always variations on the same two-pronged theme: What happens to children who enter foster care (the likelihood of events), and how long does it take for children to… Read more >