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The High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) is nationally representative, longitudinal study of 9th graders who were followed through their secondary and postsecondary years, with an emphasis on understanding students' trajectories from the beginning of high school into postsecondary education, the workforce, and beyond. What students decide to pursue when, why, and how are crucial questions for HSLS:09.

The HSLS:09 focuses on answering the following questions:

• How do parents, teachers, counselors, and students construct choice sets for students, and how are these related to students' characteristics, attitudes, and behavior?
• How do students select among secondary school courses, postsecondary institutions, and possible careers?
• How do parents and students plan financing for postsecondary experiences? What sources inform these plans?
• What factors influence students' decisions about taking STEM courses and following through with STEM college majors? Why are some students underrepresented in STEM courses and college majors?
• How students' plans vary over the course of high school and how decisions in 9th grade impact students' high school trajectories. When students are followed up in the spring of 11th grade and later, their planning and decision-making in 9th grade may be linked to subsequent behavior.

This data collection also provides data for some arts-related topics, including the following: student participation in outside of schools arts activities; credit hours of arts classes taken; GPA from arts classes; and parent-led arts experiences.

For the public-use file, a total of 23,503 students responded from over 900 high schools both public and private.

The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trial (THE-RCT) study aims to capitalize on existing data from postsecondary education RCTs to foster substantive and methodological scholarship and encourage teaching and learning opportunities. The cornerstone of THE-RCT is a restricted access file (RAF). The initial version contains individual-participant data from more than 25 of MDRC's higher education RCTs covering 50 institutions and over 50,000 students. The data were originally collected as part of different randomized controlled trial evaluations of a variety of higher education interventions. The data were collected for different student samples, at different times, and in different locations for each study.

The data were collected from four data sources: 1. Baseline: Baseline student demographic data (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, etc.) were gathered, either via a survey administered to students upon joining the study (but prior to random assignment) or from study colleges' administrative records; 2. College Transcript: Student transcript data (e.g., enrollment, credits attempted, credits earned, GPA) were provided by the study colleges or state higher education agencies; 3. College Credential Attainment: Student credential attainment data were provided by the study colleges or state higher education agencies; 4. National Student Clearinghouse: Student enrollment and credential attainment data were provided by the National Student Clearinghouse via their StudentTracker database. This includes enrollment and credential attainment data at colleges beyond the colleges where the study took place.

The RAF contains student-level data, including baseline demographics (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity), outcomes (e.g., enrollment, credits earned, credentials), an indicator of experimental group (e.g., program or control group), and study variables (e.g., a variable that allows users to link to the RCT-level database).

Through the Holistic Measures of Student Success (HMSS) project, funded by the Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) Foundation as part of their Basic Needs Initiative cohort, the researchers unpacked and explored how student success has traditionally been defined and measured within the community college sector and what new metrics and data collection processes can be developed to more holistically reflect the community college student experience. Therefore, this project aimed to (1) establish a shared understanding of current institutional practices in defining student success, and (2) measure the sector's openness to new approaches, especially those focused on students' basic needs.

To shed light on the challenges and opportunities associated with the collection and prioritization of a broader set of student success metrics, especially those focused on a more holistic set of student experiences and challenges like food and housing security, the research team surveyed community college provosts across the United States in fall 2020. The survey examined national provost perspectives on college priorities and influencing factors, traditional data collection practices, emerging data collection processes on student basic needs, and the role of data disaggregation for advancing equity.