2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:08) Field Test Methodology Report Working Paper Series
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2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:08) Field Test Methodology Report Working Paper Series The Working Paper Series was initiated to promote the sharing of the valuable work experience and knowledge reflected in these preliminary reports. These reports are viewed as works in progress and have not undergone a rigorous review for consistency with NCES Statistical Standards prior to inclusion in the Working Paper Series. NCES 2008-01 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:08) Field Test Methodology Report Working Paper Series June 2008 Melissa Cominole John Riccobono Peter Siegel Lesa Caves Jeffrey Rosen RTI International James Griffith Project Officer National Center for Education Statistics NCES 2008-01 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION U.S. Department of Education Margaret Spellings Secretary Institute of Education Sciences Grover J. Whitehurst Director National Center for Education Statistics Mark Schneider Commissioner The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data related to education in the United States and other nations. It fulfills a congressional mandate to collect, collate, analyze, and report full and complete statistics on the condition of education in the United States; conduct and publish reports and specialized analyses of the meaning and significance of such statistics; assist state and local education agencies in improving their statistical systems; and review and report on education activities in foreign countries. NCES activities are designed to address high-priority education data needs; provide consistent, reliable, complete, and accurate indicators of education status and trends; and report timely, useful, and high-quality data to the U.S. Department of Education, the Congress, the states, and other education policymakers, practitioners, data users, and the general public. We strive to make our products available in a variety of formats and in language that is appropriate to a variety of audiences. You, as our customer, are the best judge of our success in communicating information effectively. If you have any comments or suggestions about this or any other NCES product or report, we would like to hear from you. Please direct your comments to National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Sciences U.S. Department of Education 1990 K Street NW Washington, DC 20006-5651 June 2008 The NCES World Wide Web Home Page is http://nces.ed.gov. The NCES World Wide Web Electronic Catalog is http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch. Suggested Citation Cominole, M., Riccobono, J., Siegel , P., Caves, L., Rosen, J. (2008). 2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:08) Field Test Methodology Report (NCES 2008-01). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC. For ordering information on this report, write to U.S. Department of Education ED Pubs P.O. Box 1398 Jessup, MD 20794-1398 or call toll free 1-877-4ED-Pubs or order online at http://www.edpubs.org Content Contact Aurora D’Amico (202) 502–7334 aurora.d'[email protected] Executive Summary The 2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:08), conducted for the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), collected comprehensive data regarding how students and their families pay for postsecondary education. The first NPSAS study was conducted in 1986–87 to meet the need for national-level data about significant financial aid issues. Since 1987, NPSAS has been conducted every 3 to 4 years, with the last cycle, NPSAS:04, conducted during the 2003–04 academic year. The primary objective of NPSAS:08 is to produce reliable national estimates of characteristics related to financial aid for postsecondary students. NPSAS:08 also serves as the base year of data collection for the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B), which will follow a cohort of baccalaureate recipients and collect further data from them in 1 year, and again in 4 years. NPSAS:08 included a new set of instrument items to obtain baseline measures of the awareness of two new federal grants—the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG) and the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) grant—introduced in 2006. This report describes the methodology and findings of the NPSAS:08 field test, which took place during the 2006–07 school year. The NPSAS:08 field test was used to plan, implement, and evaluate methodological procedures, instruments, and systems proposed for use in the full-scale study scheduled for the 2007–08 school year. Sample Design The NPSAS:08 field test was based on a sample of all students (both those who had received financial aid and those who had not) in postsecondary institutions throughout the United States and Puerto Rico during the 2006–07 academic year. The institutional sample included public, private not-for-profit, and private for-profit institutions at the 4-year, 2-year, and less-than-2-year levels. The field test and full-scale samples were selected at the same time, prior to the field test study. Because some institutions were to be in the full-scale sample with certainty, 300 institutions were selected for the field test sample from the pool of institutions that were not selected to participate in the full-scale study. This process minimized the possibility that an institution would be burdened with participation in both the field test and full-scale samples, yet it was effective in maintaining the representativeness of the full-scale sample. Of the 300 eligible field test institutions, 270 provided enrollment lists for the student sample. Next, from the 270 institutional enrollment lists, approximately 3,0001 undergraduate, graduate, and first-professional students were chosen for the NPSAS:08 field test sample. The 1 The numbers appearing in the tables and text of this report were rounded to the nearest tens to maintain the confidentiality of study respondents. NPSAS:08 Field Test Methodology Report iii Executive Summary student sample was selected on a continual basis as the lists were received, reconciled, and unduplicated (if necessary). Of the 3,000 students sampled, 50 students were determined to be ineligible for the study, resulting in 2,950 eligible student sample members. Instrumentation The NPSAS:08 field test student interview was designed as a web-based instrument to be used both for self-administered respondents and for computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) respondents. The mixed-mode design required that several important features be embedded in the instrument, such as extensive help text to assist respondents and warnings to alert them when a response was out of range. The instrument consisted of nine sections grouped by topic. The first section determined student eligibility for the NPSAS:08 study and the future B&B studies and obtained enrollment history. The second section contained questions relating to student expenses and financial aid. Included in this section were items regarding aid-based employment at the NPSAS institution, such as work-study participation, assistantships, and fellowships, as well as the new ACG/SMART grant items. Section three focused on non-aid-based employment and personal finances. The fourth section, only administered to B&B eligible students, addressed postgraduation employment plans. The fifth section of the student interview collected postgraduation education plans from B&B eligible respondents. Section six, again applicable only to B&B eligible sample members, served to identify the teacher pipeline. Included in this section were items asking whether students had previously taught at the K-12 level, whether they were considering teaching at the K-12 level, and what steps they had taken to prepare to teach at that level. The seventh section, for all sample members, included questions about educational experiences such as languages studied, distance education courses, and transfer credit history. The eighth section of the interview gathered background and demographic information about students and their family members. The final section requested contact information from B&B eligible sample members for the follow-up studies. Data Collection Design and Outcomes Institutional Contacting Once an institution was chosen for the sample, attempts were made to contact the Chief Administrator of the institution (e.g., the president or chancellor) to verify institutional eligibility, solicit participation, and request the appointment of an Institutional Coordinator (IC) to oversee data collection within the institution. ICs were asked to provide lists or data files of all students enrolled at any time between July 1, 2006, and April 30, 2007. Several checks of quality and completeness of student lists were implemented before the lists were used to sample students. Of the 300 eligible institutions sampled for the field test, 270 provided enrollment lists, resulting in an overall institutional participation rate of about 90 percent. iv NPSAS:08 Field Test Methodology Report Executive Summary Institutional Record Abstraction A web-based computer-assisted data entry (CADE) software system was used for the abstraction of student records from institutions. The CADE system consisted of three components (student financial aid information, student registration and admissions information, and student enrollment and tuition information), focusing