Data Archive for Interdisciplinary Research on Learning

In 1999, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation started the Gates Millennium Scholars Program (GMS), a 20-year initiative which intends to expand access to higher education for high achieving, low-income minority students. The purpose of the Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) Tracking and Longitudinal study is to gather data on the lives of scholars and selected non-recipients in order to analyze the effects on the educational, civic, and personal lives of selected sample members. The main research question explored is: How has GMS impacted students and how can this knowledge help us understand how to better prepare minority students for college?

The ELMC Study collected data to describe the objectives, activities, approaches, strategies, and other aspects of the Early Learning Mentor Coach (ELMC) initiative from the perspectives of Head Start grantees, coaches, and staff. Specific research aims included:

• What were the key features of the coaching program model or approach? How was the grantee structuring the coaching initiative?
• What was the perceived quality of the coaching as it was being implemented on the ground?
• What features—such as the characteristics of coaches, Office of Head Start resources, the coach-staff relationship, staff behaviors and attitudes, teacher characteristics, and organizational characteristics—played in the implementation and the perceived success of coaching?

Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) was designed to study the adaptation process of the immigrant second generation, which is defined broadly as United States-born children with at least one foreign-born parent or children born abroad but brought at an early age to the United States.

Texas Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Stress Resilience and Health, 2016-2019 (TLSASR) is a multi-method study examining the effects of naturalistic stressors on adolescents as they enter and proceed through high school. This transitional period often presents adolescents with more and more complex sources of social and evaluative stress. Both stress levels and effectiveness of adolescents’ responses can have consequences on their life course trajectories, including contributing to gender and racial/ethnic disparities in adult health and well-being. The TLSASR dataset aims to support researchers pursuing a deeper and more integrative understanding of this critical adolescent developmental period.

The study’s data contain multiple waves of collection spanning the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2019. Informed by the biopsychosocial model of human development, the study integrates data from a range of sources and methods each wave/year. This included a survey battery assessing numerous psychological (e.g., stress, mental health, mindset), biological (e.g., height, weight, pubertal development), and contextual (e.g., school climate) factors, as well as daily in-school experience sampling, and daily salivary hormone levels for hormonal assessment. School records for each year are also included, as is an experimental manipulation testing the effects of a brief growth mindset intervention to promote improved stress resilience.

• How do dual-career families manage and organize their resources and time between family and work?
• How do work conditions, including characteristics of the job and workplace environment, affect the quality of relationships among household members?
• How do dual career parents manage the moral and social development and learning experiences of their children?
• How do the work-related responsibilities of working parents affect their child’s moral, social, and educational development?
• What effect is consumerism and technology having on how working families direct the moral and social development of their children?
• What do parents believe is their role regarding the child-care of their children and how they should fulfill that role both in terms of time and in the allocation of economic and social resources? What are some of the resources in the community that parents use to supervise their children?
• How do families regard the “free time” of adolescents and how they allocate adolescent “free time” in maintenance of the household?
• What is the quality of relationships among family members?

The goal of this project was to design and validate a series of research instruments to identify leadership for mathematics instruction in middle schools and for documenting instructional leadership practice. Adopting a distributed perspective on leadership, this work focused on both formally designated and informal leaders and their leadership routines.

The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods is an interdisciplinary study aimed at deepening society’s understanding of the causes and pathways of juvenile delinquency, adult crime, substance abuse, and violence. In particular, it is a study of children’s social and psychological development from birth to young adulthood in urban neighborhoods.

The DYS is a longitudinal study of problem and successful behavior over the life course that focuses on delinquency, drug use, victimization, and mental health. The DYS is based on a probability sample of households in “high-risk” neighborhoods

The aim of the series was to examine issues of school desegregation. It contains data on racial and ethnic composition of students and staff for each academic year in selected school districts.

• Examining the relationship between infants’ childcare arrangements (defined in terms of hours, type, quality, and stability of care and the age at which the child entered care) and children’s concurrent and long-term development. Specifically, the study investigated the association between children’s experiences in childcare and their social, emotional, language, and cognitive development.
• Examining whether the social ecology of the home moderates the effects of childcare, i.e., whether children from different home environments are differentially affected by similar childcare experiences.
• Examining whether individual differences among children moderate the effects of infant care on child development.
• Identify demographic characteristics of childcare associated with childcare quality. Of interest to policy makers is another aspect of the study, the investigation of those regulatory characteristics that predict care of higher quality.

The NSECE documents the nation’s current utilization and availability of early care and education (including school-age care), in order to deepen the understanding of the extent to which families’ needs and preferences coordinate well with providers’ offerings and constraints. The experiences of low-income families are of special interest as they are the focus of a significant component of early care and education/school-age (ECE/SA) public policy.

The National Longitudinal Study of the Class of 1972 studies describe the transition of young adults from high school through postsecondary education and the workplace. The data span 1972 through 1986 and include college transcripts.

This data collection consists of two main components: the Early Childhood Education survey (children 3 to 8 years old) and the Adult Education survey (persons 16 and older). The Early Childhood Education component was designed to collect information on children’s experiences in a range of settings, including their homes, child-care arrangements, early childhood education programs, and schools. The Adult Education Survey, the second component of this study, provides data on the characteristics of adult participants and nonparticipants in adult education programs and explores why some adults participate in these activities and others do not.

The study was designed to provide trend data about critical transitions experienced by students as they leave elementary school and progress through high school and postsecondary institutions or the work force.

Study provides measures of educational quality and direct assessment of educational outcomes and attainments on a national basis.

Data can be used to explore the relationship between drinking behaviors, parental intervention, low self-control, and opportunity.

The Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) is a project that was funded by the National Science Foundation in 1985 and was designed to examine the development of: (1) student attitudes toward and achievement in science, (2) student attitudes toward and achievement in mathematics, and (3) student interest in and plans for a career in science, mathematics, or engineering, during middle school, high school, and the first four years post-high school. The relative influence parents, home, teachers, school, peers, media, and selected informal learning experiences had on these developmental patterns was considered as well.

The Jewish School Study was undertaken to determine the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of Jewish education, how Jewish day schools are formed and organized, how Jewish schools contribute to the maintenance of continuity of a 400-year tradition, how adolescent Jews develop their identity, and what role religious education plays in this development.

The Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) Series, the predecessor to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Series, was designed to provide comprehensive information on various aspects of postsecondary education in the United States and its territories (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Marshall Islands) and Department of Defense schools outside the United States.

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.

Research on the correlates and consequences of state high school exit examinations (HSEEs) requires annual state-level data. This dataset contains information on every year in which a state mandated HSEEs as part of their general graduation requirements. Archival data on each states’ HSEE policy was collected in order to (1) test hypotheses about the factors that have lead to the diffusion of state HSEEs over time and across states, and (2) test hypotheses about the impact of state HSEEs on student academic achievement and high school graduation rates.

• Which factors are most important for determining which U.S. regions are more socioeconomically mobile?
• What are students’ trajectories after leaving high school into postsecondary education, the workforce, and beyond?
• What factors influence the students’ educational and career outcomes after passing through the American educational system?

• What difference does Head Start make to key outcomes of development and learning (and in particular, the multiple domains of school readiness) for low-income children?
• What difference does Head Start make to parental practices that contribute to children’s school readiness?
• Under what circumstances does Head Start achieve the greatest impact?
• What works for which children?
• What Head Start services are most related to impact?

The Growth, Opportunity, Aspirations and Learning of Students in College (GOALS) study is used by NCAA policymakers and member institutions to study the experiences of student-athletes across all sports and NCAA divisions. It also provides objective and attitudinal data from student-athletes on possible academic and social trade-offs and sacrifices they have made in order to participate in collegiate athletics.

The Equality of Educational Opportunity Study (EEOS), also known as the “Coleman Study,” was commissioned by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1966 to assess the availability of equal educational opportunities to children of different race, color, religion, and national origin. This study was conducted in response to provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and serves as an example of the use of a social survey as an instrument of national policy-making.

The Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) of 2002 represents a major longitudinal effort designed to provide trend data about critical transitions experienced by students as they proceed through high school and into postsecondary education or their careers. The 2002 sophomore cohort will be followed, initially at 2-year intervals, to collect policy-relevant data about educational processes and outcomes, especially as such data pertain to student learning, predictors of dropping out, and high school effects on students’ access to, and success in, postsecondary education and the work force.

ECLS-K provides data about the effects of a wide range of family, school, community, and individual variables on children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development, their early learning and early performance in school, as well as their home environment, home educational practices, school environment, classroom environment, classroom curriculum, and teacher qualifications.

The Community College Civic Outcomes survey series is designed to contribute to community understanding of the extent and ways in which community colleges develop the civic capacities of their students. More specifically these studies explore the individual and institutional factors associated with greater civic agency, behavior, and knowledge among community college students. The research questions guiding this study were:

• Holding pre-college civic behaviors constant, what individual behaviors and characteristics are associated with greater civic agency, capacity, behavior, and knowledge among students with at least one year of community college experience?
• Holding individual characteristics and behaviors constant, what institutional programs, policies, or characteristics are associated with greater civic agency, capacity, behavior, and knowledge among students with at least one year of community college experience?

The research goals of the Baseline survey were to establish a panel of sophomore and senior high school students in the state of Texas that can be followed to examine the decision-making, knowledge and attitudes of students regarding post-high school life course decisions in light of the existence of the Top 10 legislation in Texas.

The Alfred P. Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development was designed to gather a holistic picture of the adolescent experience. To understand how young people form ideas about their future, the study considered not only what adolescents’ aspirations are, but also how they may be influenced by family, peer groups, schools, and their communities. The study gathered information from 12 sites over five years, examining such research questions as:

• How do young people of various ages and family backgrounds differ in their conceptions of work?
• What learning opportunities do families with different economic circumstances provide for their children with respect to work and careers?
• How do schools influence educational expectations and career formation?

The National Study of Learning Mindsets (NSLM), also known as Students’ Perspectives about the Transition to High School (PATHS), is a longitudinal research study and program evaluation administered by the University of Texas. The purpose of NSLM is to determine if introducing students to a positive growth mindset as they transition to high school will help improve students’ academic success during high school and beyond. The National Study of Learning Mindsets addresses the following primary research questions:

• Can the growth mindset intervention improve the grades of lower-performing students in U.S. public schools?
• Can the growth mindset intervention motivate students to enroll in challenging mathematics and science courses?
• Can the growth mindset intervention reduce group-based inequalities in academic performance in U.S. public schools?
• Do the effects of the growth mindset intervention depend on schools’ formal resources (e.g., the curriculum and instruction)?
• Are the effects of the growth mindset intervention larger in schools or classrooms that are supportive of growth mindset beliefs?

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), 1994-2008 [Public Use] is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents in grades 7 through 12 during the 1994-1995 school year. The Add Health cohort was followed into young adulthood with four in-home interviews, the most recent conducted in 2008 when the sample was aged 24-32. Add Health combines longitudinal survey data on respondents’ social, economic, psychological, and physical well-being with contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships.

The MET project is based on two premises: First, a teacher’s evaluation should depend to a significant extent on his/her students’ achievement gains; second, any additional components of the evaluation (e.g., classroom observations) should be valid predictors of student achievement gain. The MET Study addressed several related research questions:

• How reliable and valid are the specific measures of teaching effectiveness under study?
• Do the various measures identify distinctive dimensions of teaching effectiveness, and if so, what dimensions are identified?
• What measures of effective teaching are empirically related to student learning gains?
• What does effective teaching look like, and how does it compare to less effective teaching?

This data collection contains information on degrees earned at a sample of postsecondary institutions in the United States. The survey collected data on the number of completions of academic, vocational, and continuing professional educational programs by award category.

The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) is an ongoing national longitudinal study of the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of Head Start children. It examines the characteristics, well-being, and accomplishments of families, the observed quality of Head Start classrooms, and the characteristics and opinions of Head Start teachers and other program staff. FACES was designed to address four central questions related to program performance objectives:

• Does Head Start enhance children’s development and school readiness?
• Does Head Start strengthen families as the primary nurturers of their children?
• Does Head Start provide children with high quality educational, health, and nutritional services?
• How is classroom quality related to child outcomes?