High School and Beyond, 1980: A Longitudinal Survey of Students in the United States (ICPSR 7896)

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This data collection contains information from the first wave of High School and Beyond (HSB), a longitudinal study of American youth conducted by the National Opinion Research Center on behalf of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Data were collected from 58,270 high school students (28,240 seniors and 30,030 sophomores) and 1,015 secondary schools in the spring of 1980. Many items overlap with the NCES's NATIONAL LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF THE CLASS OF 1972 (ICPSR 8085). The HSB study's data are contained in eight files. Part 1 (School Data) contains data from questionnaires completed by high school principals about various school attributes and programs. Part 2 (Student Data) contains data from surveys administered to students. Included are questionnaire responses on family and religious background, perceptions of self and others, personal values, extracurricular activities, type of high school program, and educational expectations and aspirations. Also supplied are scores on a battery of cognitive tests including vocabulary, reading, mathematics, science, writing, civics, spatial orientation, and visualization. To gather the data in Part 3 (Parent Data), a subsample of the seniors and sophomores surveyed in HSB was drawn, and questionnaires were administered to one parent of each of 3,367 sophomores and of 3,197 seniors. The questionnaires contain a number of items in common with the student questionnaires, and there are a number of items in common between the parent-of-sophomore and the parent-of-senior questionnaires. This is a revised file from the one originally released in Autumn 1981, and it includes 22 new analytically constructed variables imputed by NCES from the original survey data gathered from parents. The new data are concerned primarily with the areas of family income, liabilities, and assets. Other data in the file concentrate on financing of post-secondary education, including numerous parent opinions and projections concerning the educational future of the student, anticipated financial aid, student's plans after high school, expected ages for student's marriage and childbearing, estimated costs of post-secondary education, and government financial aid policies. Also supplied are data on family size, value of property and other assets, home financing, family income and debts, and the age, sex, marital, and employment status of parents, plus current income and expenses for the student. Part 4 (Language Data) provides information on each student who reported some non-English language experience, with data on past and current exposure to and use of languages. In Parts 5-6, there are responses from 14,103 teachers about 18,291 senior and sophomore students from 616 schools. Students were evaluated by an average of four different teachers who had the opportunity to express knowledge or opinions of HSB students whom they had taught during the 1979-1980 school year. Part 5 (Teacher Comment Data: Seniors) contains 67,053 records, and Part 6 (Teacher Comment Data: Sophomores) contains 76,560 records. Questions were asked regarding the teacher's opinions of their student's likelihood of attending college, popularity, and physical or emotional handicaps affecting school work. The sophomore file also contains questions on teacher characteristics, e.g., sex, ethnic origin, subjects taught, and time devoted to maintaining order. The data in Part 7 (Twins and Siblings Data) are from students in the HSB sample identified as twins, triplets, or other siblings. Of the 1,348 families included, 524 had twins or triplets only, 810 contained non-twin siblings only, and the remaining 14 contained both types of siblings. Finally, Part 8 (Friends Data) contained the first-, second-, and third-choice friends listed by each of the students in Part 2, along with identifying information allowing links between friendship pairs.

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