National Education Longitudinal Study, 1988 (ICPSR 9389)

Principal Investigator(s): United States Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics

Summary: This collection represents the first stage of a major longitudinal effort to provide trend data about critical transitions experienced by students as they leave elementary school and progress through high school and into college or their careers. The 1988 eighth-grade cohort will be followed at two-year intervals as this group passes through high school and postsecondary education. The longitudinal data collected will yield policy-relevant information about educational processes an... (more info)

Series: National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS) Series

• These data are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions. Because you are not logged in, we cannot verify that you will be able to download the data.

U.S. Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. NATIONAL EDUCATION LONGITUDINAL STUDY, 1988. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center [producer], 1989. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1990. doi:10.3886/ICPSR09389.v1

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09389.v1

Export Citation:

• RIS (generic format for RefWorks, EndNote, etc.)
• EndNote XML (EndNote X4.0.1 or higher)

Summary:   This collection represents the first stage of a major longitudinal effort to provide trend data about critical transitions experienced by students as they leave elementary school and progress through high school and into college or their careers. The 1988 eighth-grade cohort will be followed at two-year intervals as this group passes through high school and postsecondary education. The longitudinal data collected will yield policy-relevant information about educational processes and outcomes, early and later predictors of dropping out, and students' access to programs and equal opportunity. The study has four types of data files. The Parent Component was designed to collect information about the factors that influence educational attainment and participation, including questions exploring family background and socioeconomic conditions and character of the home educational system. The School Administrator component was designed to gather general descriptive information about the educational settings in which the surveyed students were enrolled in the winter and spring of 1988. These data were collected from the chief administrator of each base-year school and concern school characteristics, grading and testing structure, school culture and academic climate, program and facilities information, parental interactions and involvement, and teaching staff characteristics. The Student Component collected information on school work, aspirations, social relationships, and basic achievement areas such as reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. The Teacher Component provided data that could be used to analyze the behaviors and outcomes of the student sample. Teachers were surveyed about the base-year students' characteristics and performance in the classroom, curriculum and classes for eighth graders, and teacher demographics, professional characteristics, and relationships with other teachers, students, and parents.

Subject Terms:   adolescents, academic achievement, cognitive functioning, curriculum, educational testing, educational trends, family background, educational environment, educational opportunities, home environment, junior high school students, learning, school attendance, socioeconomic status, student participation, teacher student relationship, test scores

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

• 1988

Date of Collection:  

• 1988--1989

Universe:   All eligible eighth graders in spring 1988.

Data Types:   survey data, and event/transaction data

Data Collection Notes:

SPSS Control Cards accompany each data file.

Sample:   A two-stage stratified probability sampling design was used to select a nationally representative sample of schools and students. The first stage resulted in 1,734 school selections with 1,052 participating schools, including 815 public and 237 private schools. The second stage produced a random selection of 26,435 students among the sampled schools, resulting in participation by 24,599 eighth-grade students.

Data Source:

personal interviews, and test scores

Original ICPSR Release:  1990-12-04

Version History:

• 2006-01-18 File CB9389.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

Use any of the notification links to add this study to your RSS feed; you will then receive notification if the study is substantively updated.

• Citations exports are provided above.

• Export Study-level metadata (does not include variable-level metadata)

  • DDI Codebook or DDI Lifecycle

  • Dublin Core

  • MARC21 XML

  • DataCite XML

If you're looking for collection-level metadata rather than an individual metadata record, please visit our Metadata Records page.

• View Usage of this Study