The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [98]
From the core sample of 1,250, 875 debtors (70 percent) agreed to a telephone interview. Of these, it was possible to contact and complete at least one schedule of the telephone survey with 609 debtors, for a response rate of 69.6 percent of those who agreed to be interviewed, or 48.7 percent of all debtors in the core sample. In the supplemental housing sample, 521 debtors were eligible to be interviewed; of these, 328 completed telephone surveys, for a response rate of 62.9 percent. In total, 930 telephone interviews were completed between the core and the supplemental samples.
Coding Accuracy
Data from both the questionnaires and court records were entered into a Microsoft Access database designed specifically for this instrument. Training was extensive, particularly for collecting data from court records. Ten percent of all questionnaire entries were rechecked for errors. The error rate was approximately 0.7 percent. Because the court record data coding was extremely complex, on completion of the data entry, the researchers arranged to recode 500 cases. All mistakes were corrected; therefore, the accuracy of these 500 cases approaches 100 percent. Of the remaining approximately 1,720 cases, 15 percent were randomly selected for quality control checks. On average, there was one error per 160 data points, which translates into accuracy exceeding 99 percent.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In a book about debt, we now acknowledge our own debts, which are substantial. No work involving so much data, so many different areas of expertise, and so many ideas could emerge without the contributions of many different actors.
We begin our thanks with those who provided the support that made this book possible. The Ford Foundation (grant 1010-1838) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (grant 042425) provided generous support for the collection of the bankruptcy data that are used in this book. The Fellowship Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study was the first to invest in a project about middle-class mothers and children in financial trouble, generously supporting one of us (Elizabeth) for the year of research that laid the foundation for this book. The Harvard Law School and the New York University School of Law both made substantial contributions to the Consumer Bankruptcy Project as well; we are particularly grateful to the respective former deans, Robert Clark and John Sexton, for their ongoing support for empirical work so that the project could begin.
As we noted in the appendix, the 2001 Consumer Bankruptcy Project was built on the hard labor put into the 1981 and 1991 Consumer Bankruptcy Projects. Dr. Teresa Sullivan and Professor Jay Westbrook have been my (Elizabeth’s) longtime coauthors, coinvestigators, and coconspirators. When it was time to put together the 2001 Project, they brought their considerable talents and energies to yet another empirical study. No one could ask for better fellow travelers—and friends.
The 2001 project opened up new lines of inquiry, requiring participation by people with expertise in diverse specialties. We are grateful to Dr. David Himmelstein and Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, both of the Harvard Medical School, for their contributions on health care finance issues. We wish to thank Dr. Susan Wachter, of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Michael Schill, of the New York University Law School, for structuring the research on housing policy issues. We thank Professors Bruce Markell and Robert Lawless, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, for developing the interview questions for the self-employed. Their substantial contributions transformed the Consumer Bankruptcy Project into a richly complex, multifaceted study.
In addition, three former students (now moving into academic positions in their own right) served