Medical Records Data

Medical records data, abstracted from the birth hospitalization records for mothers and focal children, are now available via a restricted use data contract. Users can review the medical records abstraction form and the file documentation before applying for the contract data.

Medical records data are available for 3,684 births (mothers and focal children). When there are no medical record data for a given case, it was for 1 of 3 reasons: (1) The hospital did not permit us to abstract records or there were too few cases for it to be financially feasible to collect data at that hospital (38%), (2) the mother refused consent (33%), or (3) the records could not be located in the hospital (29%).

The file includes city of interview and hospital variables, which allows you to identify cases who gave birth in the same city/hospital, but not the names of the cities/hospitals. Random noise has been introduced into the data to protect confidentiality. The noise should have no impact on statistical analyses.

Please note: The medical records data are contained in a standalone file that contains medical records data (from the birth hospitalization) merged with data files from all FF core and add-on studies (including fathers’ surveys) that are available to date. They do not contain geographic identifiers or contextual data and those files cannot be and are not allowed to be merged to this data.

If you have additional questions about this data, you can email ffdatahelp@opr.princeton.edu.