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** Archived OASP Report -- Caution: information may be out of date. **
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Family Medical Leave Act Survey Data Files

Balancing the Needs of Families and Employers
The Family and Medical Leave Surveys
2000 Update Data Files

The 2000 Surveys of Employees and Establishments were conducted by Westat for the Department of Labor. Both surveys were conducted between July and October of 2000. These surveys are similar to ones done in 1995, and they are intended to provide an update on the use and impact of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) since 1995. The primary reference period for the surveys was from January 1999 to July 2000, but some questions referred to the period from 1995 through 1998.

The 2000 Survey of Establishments data set (FMLA_EST.XPT) consists of completed interviews with 1839 establishments. The respondent selected for each establishment was the human resource director or the person responsible for the company’s benefits plan. The final weighted response rate was 65.0%.

The 2000 Survey of Employees data set (FMLA_EMP.XPT) consists of interviews with 2558 eligible respondents. Respondents were eligible if they had worked at any time during the eighteen-month reference period. The final response rate for this survey was 58.3%.

For the Survey of Employees, three types of respondents were identified and interviewed according to a predetermined sub-sampling rate:

  1. Leave-takers, those employees reporting that they had taken a leave for at least one of the reasons covered under the FMLA during the reference (N=1,229);
  2. Leave-needers, those employees reporting they had not taken a leave but needed a leave for an FMLA reason (N=203); and
  3. Employed only, those employees who neither took nor needed a leave during the reference period (N=1,126).

The FMLA data files are provided as SAS transport datasets.  These can be run on any platform running the SAS system software. Each file has accompanying documentation that describes the dataset and contains sample code that illustrates how to convert the SAS transport dataset to a standard SAS file. In order to use these files you must be running SAS either on your PC, Network or Mainframe computer.

For some browsers you may need to use your right mouse button to select the links in order to begin the file download.

These files have been compressed to decrease file size and speed download times.They are self-extracting executable files; after you have downloaded the files you will need to execute the files to decompress them.

When the file for each survey is unzipped, three files will appear. One file is the transport data-set (".xpt" extension), one file is the documentation for the variables on the data-set (".doc") and the third file is a "read-me" file (".txt"). Users should read the "read-me" file to find out how to use the other two files.

Download the files:
2000 Survey of Establishments data set (FMLA_EST.EXE) (254 Kb)
2000 Survey of Employees data set (FMLA_EMP.EXE) (1,720 Kb)

If you experience problems downloading the files, please contact us at fmladata@dol.gov