To provide a more complete picture of respondents' educational experiences, data collected during the regular survey were supplemented with three special surveys:

• School Surveys conducted in 1996-97 and 2000-01 provided data about high schools in the areas where NLSY97 respondents lived.
• Transcript Survey (high school) collected in 1999-2000 and in 2004 provided high school information about the respondents themselves.
• Post-secondary transcripts collected in 2012-2013 provided college information for the NLSY97 respondents.

School Surveys

In the winter of 1996-97, all high schools in the 147 NLSY97 primary sampling units with a 12th grade, or nearly 7,400 schools, received the first School Survey questionnaire. This survey focused on institutional-level attributes such as school policies and management, as well as student-level experience data. This self-administered instrument asked principals (or their proxies) to provide detailed data on the characteristics of the school, the staff, and the student body. Additional information on the school's general practices, graduation policies, and school-to-work programs was also solicited. Seventy-two percent of the schools responded to either the complete school survey or to a shorter critical items questionnaire.

A second school survey was conducted in the winter of 2000-01. All vocational high schools and high schools with a 12th grade in the 147 NLSY97 primary sampling units were included in the survey. Additionally, if an NLSY97 respondent attended a school during round 2 that was not in one of the sampling areas, the school was included in the sample if it met the grade-level requirements. Over 9,600 total schools received School Survey questionnaires. Seventy-one percent of the schools completed a School Survey questionnaire, either by mail or with an interviewer by telephone.

Due to "births" and "deaths" of schools between 1996 and 2000 and nonresponse in 1996, not all schools in the primary sampling unit areas are present in the data for both years. The retention rate of 1996 schools into the 2000 survey was 74.2 percent (3,900 of 5,253).

The next paragraphs first describe the data collected in 1996-97 and then discuss the questions asked in 2000-01. The content of the 2000 questionnaire overlapped significantly with the 1996 instrument. However, many questions were reworded slightly, and the revised structure of the questionnaire gave less prominence to school-to-work subjects. To reduce the time burden, questionnaire items from the 1996 instrument were modified to encourage respondents to provide approximate values rather than requiring them to consult administrative records for exact figures.

1996 survey

After identifying the type of school (e.g., comprehensive public, Catholic parish, other religious affiliation) and the grade level(s) served by the school, administrators were questioned about school characteristics. Specifics included the length of the school day, the number of days of instruction per year, and the school's facilities (e.g., a library, a health clinic, a computer center, a drug and alcohol prevention program). The survey also collected detailed information about teachers, such as the proportion of full-time to part-time staff; the proportion with a graduate degree; and the staff's racial, ethnic, and sex composition.

School administrators were next asked about the average daily attendance rate, the total enrollment, and the racial, ethnic, and sex composition of the student body. This section of the survey solicited information on the opportunities available to students, such as the type of courses, the course levels, and the programs offered (e.g., remedial math or English, gifted and talented, job placement, summer school). In addition, detailed data were gathered on the 1996 graduating class (e.g., the percentage of students who took the SAT I/ACT, the average score on the SAT I/ACT). Questions were also asked about the requirements for graduation, such as the total number of credits, the number of credits in a subject, or a standardized test score.

Another section of the school survey gathered information on the number of reported incidents of gang activity, vandalism, weapons possession, and student use of alcohol or drugs on school property. In addition, the administrators were asked to rate the amount of influence wielded by certain groups (e.g., state department of education, various school district officials, principal, teachers, parent association) on issues such as establishing the curriculum, hiring full-time teachers, and spending the school's budget.

Finally, the 1996 survey collected information on the general student requirements for enrollment in a number of school-based learning programs (e.g., career major, cooperative education). Information about the provision of school-based learning programs complements questions in the Youth Questionnaire that ask the respondents about their enrollment in these programs. See School-Based Learning Programs for definitions of the various types of programs.

2000 survey

The second School Survey instrument began with questions about the school and its overall offerings: grade levels, school type, tuition, program offerings, computer and other facilities, and sources of federal funding. Faculty-related questions asked about the number of teachers with different education and experience levels, any staff development requirements, basic demographics, and the salary schedule. Questions about the student body captured basic demographics, special education and Limited English Proficiency (LEP) enrollments, and remedial and accelerated program offerings, as well as percentages of students involved in such activities as athletics, truancy, and illegal activities. The instrument also asked about the academic requirements of the high school's curriculum and academic outcomes of its graduates.

The career preparation section began with items about how schools help students prepare for careers, how schools support teachers in professional development, and how enrollments have changed in various career preparation programs since the 1994-95 school year. A battery of questions asked about the existence of, enrollment in, duration of, and targeting of several different career preparation programs: apprenticeship, job shadowing, internships, career major/pathway, career academy, school sponsored enterprise, cooperative education, and tech-prep. Most of these programs are also included School-Based Learning Programs.

Much of this information cannot be released in the public use data set due to confidentiality concerns. To determine whether the School Survey information would be appropriate for one's research (in terms of content, sample size, etc.), click on the School Survey codebook pages, which show answer categories, frequency distributions, and other related information. To view the questionnaires themselves, go to the NLSY97 School Questionnaire 1996 Long Form, NLSY97 School Questionnaire 1996 Short Form, and NLSY97 School Questionnaire 2000. Use of the School Survey data is largely restricted to researchers meeting confidentiality requirements. Interested users can refer to the School Surveys page of the BLS website for more information concerning these procedures.

Transcript Survey (high school)

Transcript survey data came directly from high school transcripts secured from youths' high schools after respondents were no longer enrolled as high school students. In 1999-2000, transcripts were obtained and processed for 1,417 youths who had graduated from high school or had reached age 18 and were no longer attending high school. A second wave of transcripts was collected in 2004 for 4,815 youths. School registrars provided a copy of the transcript that the high school maintained, a course catalog (if available), and indicated whether the student was designated for such programs as bilingual education, special education, or gifted/talented programming.

Transcript survey information could not be obtained for 2,752 youths. There are several reasons for this non-interview response. Most respondents within this category either did not return a signed permission form or did not have a school identified for mailing purposes. For others, student permission was secured, but the school record was not found or the school or district refused to release the information (see Table 1).

A data quality flag, called TRANS_PROBFLAG, was constructed to alert users to the existence of cases whose school transcript data was deemed by NLS staff to be incomplete or flawed in some way that would make the case less likely to provide useful information. The flag was a composite of five separate tests flagging different types of problems; a positive result for one or more of those tests resulted in the case being coded 1 (Yes). The five component tests were:

• Is the case missing all Carnegie credit information?
• Is the case lacking all usable course-grade information?
• Is there a grade-level sequencing problem?
• Does the record show an extremely limited number of courses?
• Does the case contain a limited number of academic years?

Table 1. Transcript Survey status by respondent

Category		Respondents	Percent of Sample
Collected Transcript Records	Wave 1	1417
	Wave 2	4815
	Total	6232	69.4%
NIR: Wave 2 Fielded, Not Collected	Refusal at District Level	111
	Refusal at School Level	231
	Student Record Not Found	427
	Student Record Unavailable	117
	Total	886	9.9%
NIR: Not Fielded for Transcript Survey	Unsecured Permission	1572
	School Not Identified	231
	Not Mailed, Final Blocked	63
	Total	1866	20.8%
Sample Total		8984	100%
Note: table 1 is based on the variable R98596.00, TRANS_STAT.

Post-secondary transcripts

College transcript data for NLSY97 respondents were collected in 2012–2013 and are available via the NLS Investigator by searching for variable names beginning with the prefix PSTRAN. The PSTRAN variables have been constructed to provide additional insight into course content. These data include a youth-level file with selected transcript-related data, as well as course- and term-level files detailing course enrollment. Institutions are identified using the non-disclosive NEWSCH_PUBID values, which are youth-specific but not meaningful across respondents. This allows for the extraction of information from course titles and numbers for researchers to analyze course-taking behavior while maintaining respondent and institutional confidentiality. For more detailed information, see Appendix 12: Post- Secondary Transcript Study.

Table 2. PSTRAN variables

Variable	Description
PSTRAN_CRS_TITLE_DEV.#	Course title flag developmental
PSTRAN_CRS_TITLE_PRA.#	Course title flag practical
PSTRAN_CRS_TITLE_ADV.#	Course title flag advance
PSTRAN_CRS_TITLE_INT.#	Course title flag introduction
PSTRAN_CRS_NUMLEAD0.#	Leading zero flag
PSTRAN_CRS_CCM6.#	Revised 6-digit CCM
PSTRAN_CRS_CCM2.#	Revised 2-digit CCM
PSTRAN_CRS_CCM6_R_FLAG	Flag indicating change of English remedial 6-digit CCM code

Four flags provide information about the verbatim course title appearing in the transcript. These flags simply indicate presence of specific character strings in the course title field on the transcript. In conjunction with other variables, these flags may assist in identifying certain types of courses, although the flags on their own are likely to identify course types with error.

The course title flags and an additional flag have values:

• 1 = Course flagged
• 0 = Course not flagged

Reserved codes (-1 through -5) are defined consistent with other PSTRAN course-level variables.

PSTRAN_CRS_TITLE_DEV.#

Course title flag developmental – course had one or more of the following terms in its course title (* indicates that misspellings and variants of the term were also accepted):

• REMEDIAL*, REMED
• BASIC with COL* or SKILL* or ALGEBRA, WRITING, MATH*
• DEVELOPMENTAL or DEVELOP, except when the course title also includes BIO*, PSY*, or ECON*
• DEVLOPMENTAL
• DEVELOPMNTL
• DEVLOPMNT
• DEV with ALGEBRA, READING, MATH*, SKILL*, COL*, COMP*, WRITING
• GED
• BEG* with COLLEGE, ENGLISH, MATH*, WRITING or READING
• PREP* with COL, COLLEGE, ENGLISH, MATH*, WRITING, ALGEBRA, WRITE or READING
• PRE* with ALGEBRA, COMP*, COLLEGE, CALCULUS, MATH*

PSTRAN_CRS_TITLE_PRA.#

Course title flag practical - course had one or more of the following terms in its course title:

• LAB
• PRACTICE, PRACTICUM, PRACTICAL
• FIELD
• TEACH
• PROJECT
• INTERNSHIP, INTERN
• CERTIFICATION, CERTIFICATE

PSTRAN_CRS_TITLE_ADV.#

Course title flag advanced - course had one or more of the following terms in its course title:

• ADVANCED, ADV
• INTERMEDIATE
• II, III

PSTRAN_CRS_TITLE_INT.#

Course title flag introduction - course had one or more of the following terms in it course title (* indicates that misspellings and variants of the term were also accepted):

• PRINCIPLES, PRINC
• FUNDAMENTALS
• I
• INTRO, INTRODUCTION
• SURVEY, SURV
• ENTRY-LEVEL*

PSTRAN_CRS_NUMLEAD0.#

(Another variable providing contextual information on course numbers that may assist in identifying remedial courses.)

Leading zero flag – course had a course number (such as ENG 058) with a leading zero. This type of number is often seen in remedial courses.

Revised CCM codes

• PSTRAN_CRS_CCM6.#: Revised 6-digit CCM
• PSTRAN_CRS_CCM2.#: Revised 2-digit CCM
• PSTRAN_CRS_CCM6_R_FLAG: Flag indicating change of English remedial 6-digit CCM code

The CCM6 and CCM2 variable sets replace existing variables of the same names. Code values can be found in the 2010 College Course Map Technical Report. The replacement variables differ from 32.0108 ‘Developmental/Remedial English’ to 23.1301 ‘Writing, General.’ Recoded courses can be identified using the variable set PSTRAN_CRS_CCM6_R_FLAG.

The availability of the course title flags allows researchers to identify family 23 courses that may be remedial. These courses were originally assigned to the remedial CCM category 32 because they could not otherwise have been identified as potentially remedial. This edit affects 3,500 of the 129,000 courses in the file.

Although no recoding has been done for mathematics courses, we add the following notes regarding CCM codes for remedial math:

The classification of a course as remedial can be inconsistent across institutions, across units within an institution, and even for a given student at an institution. For example, the same course title may be designated as remedial at one institution and not at another. Within institutions, an algebra course may be considered remedial for an engineering student but not for a marketing student. Even for a given individual, changing majors from engineering to marketing can change whether or not a course earns credit towards a degree. In other cases, a passing grade in a course may be required to be accompanied by a certain score on a placement test in order for a course to be designated as non-remedial. These issues are most germane to English and Mathematics courses. To provide the maximum flexibility to researchers, we have taken the following steps to classifying courses and offering researchers the potential to designate courses as remedial according to different research specifications:

1. Courses that could potentially be remedial math courses based on their course titles are assigned to category 32.0104.
2. Courses that were specifically designated as remedial on the transcripts through course titles, grade annotations, or other notes, are indicated as such in the variable series REM_ANN.
3. Courses with a leading zero in the course number (for example, English 099) are indicated as such in the variable series NUMLEAD0.
4. Courses with specific key words in course titles often associated with remedial courses are indicated as such in the variable series TITLE_DEV

In addition to these, researchers may want to consider such criteria as:

1. term number in which the course was taken (remedial courses are often taken earlier in enrollment at an institution), and
2. whether or not a passing grade was associated with positive credits earned (remedial courses may not always earn degree credit depending on the rules of an institution).

Depending on the research question of interest, users may choose to use some combination of these criteria to differentiate remedial courses from non-remedial courses. Researchers may want to re-code to ‘27.0101 General Mathematics’ the CCM_6 value of any course that is coded as ‘32.0104 Developmental/Remedial Mathematics’ but not considered as remedial in a given analysis.

Comparison to Other NLS Surveys	School surveys have been conducted for the NLSY79, Children of the NLSY79, the Young Women, and the Young Men. Each of these surveys has recorded information on the school's total enrollment, number of books in the school library, qualifications of the staff, and ethnic/racial composition of the faculty and students. The NLSY79 and Children of the NLSY79 surveys also asked about the school's grading system and average daily attendance. Transcript surveys have been conducted for the NLSY79 and for the Children of the NLSY79. These surveys have included information on course subject matter, enrollment dates, and grades earned. For more precise details about the content of each survey, users should consult the appropriate cohort's User's Guide.
Survey Instruments	School-level data were collected from schools using the School Survey instruments. Transcript variables were created from the respondents' school transcripts as provided by the individual schools.
Related User's Guide Sections	Achievement Tests School-Based Learning Programs School Experience
Main Area of Interest	Education: Achievement Tests