Introduction
The National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) collects data annually on farmworker populations. The NAWS is a national random sample survey of crop farmworkers in the continental United States that is housed at the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) of the United States Department of Labor (DOL). The NAWS, implemented by the contractor JBS International’s Aguirre Division (JBS/Aguirre), uses field survey methods developed and refined for this predominantly migrant and seasonal worker population.
An agreement was established in February 2008 between the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the ETA/DOL. As a result of this agreement, the NAWS team first created and piloted an MSHS Supplement asking about families’ child care utilization, while refining other elements of the NAWS to allow for more accurate identification of eligibility for MSHS (i.e., isolating variables such as income, work history, and age of family members).