Ten years of teacher questionnaire data from the LSC initiative are available to researchers for secondary analysis. The NSF funded eight cohorts of projects, for a total of 88 projects, between 1995 and 2002. The public release dataset contains data from 1996-97, the year the teacher questionnaire was stabilized for longitudinal purposes, to 2005-06, the final year of the LSC core evaluation. Through the 1997-98 data collection year, all existing projects were required to collect teacher questionnaire data each year. Starting in 1998-99, projects were asked to collect teacher questionnaire data at only three time points: their baseline, second, and final years of funding. (Note that some projects opted to collect teacher questionnaire data at additional time points.)
Projects that targeted 350 or fewer teachers were required to administer the questionnaire to their population of teachers. Projects that targeted more than 350 teachers were required to administer the questionnaire to a simple random sample of at least 300 teachers (in some cases, projects chose to administer the questionnaire to their population of teachers). Because sampling was stratified by project, yearly sampling weights were created (computed as the number of targeted teachers divided by the number of returned questionnaires) so that the results of analyses would be representative of all teachers targeted by the LSC initiative each year. In addition, the dataset contains another weight that can be used in longitudinal analyses.
NOTE: Although use of the weights in the public release dataset will provide correct parameter estimates in programs like SPSS, standard errors will be substantially underestimated, likely resulting in “false positives” from statistical tests. A number of methods exist for adjusting standard errors to account for sampling weights. One method is to use a statistical program designed for the analyses of data from complex samples, such as WesVar. The LSC public release dataset contains “strata” and “varunit” data for creating BRR replicate weights in WesVar.
For access to the data, complete the form linked below (all fields are required) and fax it to HRI (919-493-7589). After receiving the completed form, HRI will contact you via email with instructions for accessing the data. The data are available in either SPSS (.sav) or a tab-delimited text format. An HTML data dictionary and PDF versions of the questionnaires will be included with the dataset.
The form below is a PDF file which can be read by Adobe Acrobat Reader (if you do not already have Acrobat Reader, you can download it for free from Adobe’s website).
Click here to download the terms of use agreement. (PDF 16KB)