Hig Report

The 1998 High School Transcript Study provides the U.S. Department of Education and other educational policymakers with information regarding current course offerings and students' course-taking patterns in U.S. secondary schools. Similar studies were conducted in 1982, 1987, 1990, and 1994. This guide documents the procedures used to collect and summarize the data. It also provides information needed to use all publicly released data files produced by the study. In previous years, the information in this technical report was reported in two documents, the Data File User's Manual and the Technical Manual. The report contains these sections: (1) "Introduction to the High School Transcript Study"; (2) "Background: Sample Design"; (3) "Selection of Primary Sampling Units, Schools, and Students for the 1998 High School Transcript Study"; (4) "Data Collection Procedures"; (5) "Data Processing Procedures"; (6) "Weighting and Estimation of Sampling Variance"; and (7) "1998 High School Transcript Study Data Files." Fifteen appendixes provide supplemental information, including the questionnaires and the code books for the study's individual files. (Contains 32 tables, 3 figures, 15 exhibits, and 16 references.) (SLD)

This report describes and evaluates the methods, procedures, techniques, and activities that produced the fourth (1992) follow-up of the High School and Beyond (HS&B) study. HS&B began in 1980 as the successor to the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. The original collection techniques of HS&B were replaced by computer assisted telephone interviews, and other electronic techniques replaced the original methods. HS&B data are more user-friendly and less resource-dependent as a results of these changes. There were 2 components to the fourth follow-up: (1) the respondent survey which was a computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) based on 14,825 members of the 1980 sophomore cohort, and (2) a transcript study based on the 9,064 sophomore cohort members who reported postsecondary attendance. The response to the respondent survey was 85.3%. Response rate for the transcript study varied from 50.4% at private, for-profit institutions to 95.1% at public, four-year institutions. Technical innovations in this survey round included verification and correction of previously collected data through the CATI instrument, online coding applications, and statistical quality control. Survey data and information about the methodology are presented in 49 tables. An appendix contains the transcript request packages. (SLD)