National Beneficiary Survey (NBS) Round Five

General NBS Round Five Documentation
Public Use Files
        Public Use File Round Five Documentation
        Public Use Round Five Data Files

National Beneficiary Survey (NBS) Round Five

In 2015, we fielded the round five NBS to a national cross-sectional sample of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries (the Representative Beneficiary Sample). We also conducted semi-structured interviews with 91 successful workers. Starting with round five, the NBS no longer includes a topical sample of Ticket to Work participants.

For round five, we completed interviews with 4,062 individuals in the national sample of beneficiaries.  The weighted response rate for the Representative Beneficiary Sample was 62.6 percent.

General NBS Round Five Documentation

The following paper, completed as part of the round five NBS, provides information from semi-structured interviews with successful workers on the obstacles to finding and maintaining a job and the variety of strategies beneficiaries use to overcome them. 

“Employment Experiences of Young Adults and High Earners Who Receive Social Security Disability Benefits: Findings from Semi-structured Interviews”

We are providing the following NBS documentation in PDF format (these documents relate to the full restricted use version of the NBS data, but most of the information in these files is applicable to the public use files as well):

NBS R5 Editing, Coding, Weighting, and Imputation Report
NBS R5 Data Quality Report
NBS R5 User's Guide
NBS R5 Questionnaire
NBS R5 Non-Response Bias Report

Public Use Files

The public use files are available for the round five Representative Beneficiary Sample and for the Representative Beneficiary Samples from earlier rounds. For more information on the public use files, visit the public use files page.

Public Use Files Round Five Documentation

We are providing the following NBS documentation in PDF format:
NBS R5 PUF Codebook

Public Use Round Five Data Files (updated May 2020--see ERRATA in NBS R5 PUF Codebook)

We are providing the following NBS data file in SAS 9.4 format:
nbsr5puf_SAS_revised.zip

We are providing the following NBS data file in CSV format:
nbsr5puf_CSV_revised.zip

We are providing the following NBS data file in Stata format:
nbsr5puf_STATA_revised.zip