Procedure
The T3 interview was conducted when the index children were five years old. Birthmothers and co-mothers were interviewed separately in their homes or by telephone. The research protocol calls for subsequent interviews with the mothers when the index child is 10 years (T4), 17 years (T5), and 25 years (T6) old. If permission is granted, the children, too, will be interviewed at T4, T5, and T6.
Since continuity is critical to a longitudinal study of this nature, participants are contacted twice annually to verify their addresses and telephone numbers. They are also sent copies of NLFS publications, and encouraged to provide feedback about each phase of the project.
Semi-Structured Interview
The semi-structured, 184-item T3 interview was modified from the T2 instrument so that questions appropriate for mothers of five-year-old children could be included. The questions were open-ended and began with the least sensitive material (e.g., demographic), and proceeded to more affective material (e.g., family conflicts). Because most participants had difficulty finding time for the interviews once their children were born, efforts were made to limit the number of questions after T1. The average duration of the T3 interviews, which were yet more streamlined than those of T2, was one hour.
The T3 questionnaire assessed six areas of motherhood experience: health status, parenting experiences, relationship issues, support systems, educational choices, and discrimination concerns. Under the topic of health concerns, the mothers were asked to comment on the index child's health and development, family health status, their own utilization of mental health services, and their own substance use history. Questions concerning parenting experiences and relationship issues focused on the pleasures and stresses of raising children with continuous partners, with divorced co-parents, or alone. Regarding support systems, participants provided information about acceptance by their family of origin, their neighborhood, and the lesbian community. In the section on secular and spiritual education, the mothers discussed school choices and spiritual training for their children. Finally, they were queried about the impact of homophobia on their families.
At the end of the interview, the interviewers rated each family's overall level of functioning on a scale of 1-5 (with 1=low, 5=high), based on a quality of life assessment, since T2. For assigning a score to each family, the interviewers were instructed to utilize diagnostic skills comparable to those reporting a Global Assessment of Functioning score (DSM-IV) in an individual mental health evaluation.
