RCMD: Resource Center for Minority Data
Really Cool
    Minority Data

Early Childhood Longitudinal Study [United States]: Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ICPSR 3676)

Version Date: Aug 8, 2013

Cite this study |

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

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03676.v1

Version V1

Slide tabs to view more

Summary

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) program provides national data on children's status at birth and at various points thereafter, children's transition to nonparental care, early education programs, and school, and children's experiences and growth through the fifth grade. ECLS also provides data to test hypotheses about the effects of a wide range of family, school, community, and individual variables on children's development, early learning, and early performance in school. The Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 addresses four key issues: (1) school readiness, (2) children's transitions to kindergarten, first grade, and beyond, (3) the relationship between children's kindergarten experience and their elementary school performance, and (4) children's growth in math, reading, and general knowledge (i.e., science and social studies), and their progress through elementary school.

Citation

United States Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. Early Childhood Longitudinal Study [United States]: Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-08-08. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03676.v1

Export Citation:

  • RIS (generic format for RefWorks, EndNote, etc.)
  • EndNote

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
Hide

Time Period(s)

1998 -- 1999

Date of Collection

1998 -- 1999

Data Collection Notes

  1. Users are advised to review the errata file prior to conducting any analyses.

  2. Users should note the organization of the information in this collection. The data file contains data for both the Base Year and the First Grade as units of analysis. The same data file, user guide, and SAS and SPSS setup files are used for both units of analysis and appear in Dataset 0001, Base Year and First Grade Data. The files to be used with either unit of analysis, are further identified with the term, all, in their filenames. Each unit of analysis has its own documentation and questionnaire with those for the Base Year found in Dataset 0001 and those for the First Grade found in Dataset 0002, First Grade Codebook and Instruments.

Hide

Sample

A nationally representative sample of approximately 22,000 children who enrolled in about 1,000 kindergarten programs (both private and public) during the 1998-1999 school year, and their families, teachers, and schools.

Universe

Children, and their families, teachers, and schools in the United States.

Data Source

Computer-assisted telephone interviewing for the parents, self-administered questionnaires for the teachers and the school administrators, and cognitive and noncognitive activities and tests for the children.

Data Type(s)

Hide

Original Release Date

2003-03-27

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • United States Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. Early Childhood Longitudinal Study [United States]: Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999. ICPSR03676-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2006-04-05. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03676.v1

2013-08-08 The ECLS-K instrument matrix has been created.

2006-04-05 An errata file was added to the data collection.

2003-03-27 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Hide

Weight

There are several sets of K-1 longitudinal weights computed for children with complete data from different combinations of rounds. All K-1 longitudinal weights are child-level weights. There are no K-1 longitudinal weights at the school or teacher level since school- and teacher-level weights are not computed for the first grade year due to lack of representativeness.

Weight to be used for analysis of ...

  • C23CW0 - child direct assessment data from BOTH spring-kindergarten and fall-first grade, alone or in conjunction with any combination of a limited set of child characteristics (e.g., age, sex, race-ethnicity).
  • C23PW0 - parent interview data from BOTH spring-kindergarten and fall-first grade.
  • C123CW0 - child direct assessment data from fall- AND spring-kindergarten AND fall-first grade, alone or in conjunction with any combination of a limited set of child characteristics (e.g., age, sex, race-ethnicity).
  • C123PW0 - parent interview data from fall- AND spring-kindergarten AND fall-first grade.
  • C24CW0 - child direct assessment data from BOTH spring-kindergarten and spring-first grade, alone or in conjunction with any combination of a limited set of child characteristics (e.g., age, sex, race-ethnicity).
  • C24PW0 - parent interview data from BOTH spring-kindergarten and spring-first grade.
  • C124CW0 - child direct assessment data from fall-kindergarten AND spring-kindergarten AND spring-first grade, alone or in conjunction with any combination of a limited set of child characteristics (e.g., age, sex, race-ethnicity).
  • C124PW0 - parent interview data from fall-kindergarten AND spring-kindergarten AND spring-first grade.
  • C1_4CW0 - child direct assessment data from all four rounds of data collection, alone or in conjunction with any combination of a limited set of child characteristics (e.g., age, sex, and race-ethnicity).
  • C1_4PW0 - parent interview data from all four rounds of data collection.
  • Y2COMW0 - child direct assessment data from fall-kindergarten AND spring-kindergarten AND spring-first grade, in conjunction with parent and/or teacher data from spring-first grade, AND one or more base year rounds of parent and/or teacher data.

Choosing a Weight

Each SDA file is set up to use a different weight. To choose the appropriate file/weight for your analysis, first decide which two or more points in time are the focus of your analysis. The analysis could pertain to two points in time (e.g., spring-kindergarten and fall-first grade, or spring kindergarten and spring-first grade), three points in time (any three of fall-kindergarten, spring-kindergarten, fall-first grade, and spring-first grade), or four points in time (all four rounds of data). For example, if the analysis uses spring-kindergarten and fall-first grade data, then the appropriate weight would be one that begins with C23 (denoting child-level data from round 2 AND round 3). Second, consider the source of the data, which also affects the choice of the weight, based on whether the data were collected through the child assessments, parent interviews, or teacher questionnaires A or B.

Examples:

K-1 longitudinal weights are used to produce estimates of differences between two or more rounds of data collection spanning across both kindergarten and first grade.

  1. Less complex decision examples involving two rounds of data collection are as follows: (1) Estimates of the differences in children's mean assessment scores between spring kindergarten and spring first grade would use C24CW0 (2) estimates of the difference in social rating scores as reported by parents during the same time period would use C24PW0.
  2. A more complex decision example involving more than two rounds of data follows: Examining whether gains children make in their reading knowledge and skills during the kindergarten year and from the end of kindergarten to the end of first grade are related to parents' and teachers' beliefs about kindergarten readiness and parental educational expectations. In this case, the weight Y2COMW0 would be appropriate.

Hide

Notes

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

CFDA logo

This study is maintained and distributed by the Child and Family Data Archive (CFData). CFData hosts datasets about young children, their families and communities, and the programs that serve them. CFData is supported by Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), an office of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.