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The National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) includes a series of random digit dial (RDD) surveys developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. It is designed to collect information on important educational issues through telephone surveys of households in the United States. This report describes an experiment conducted in NHES:2003. The goal of the experiment was to test the effectiveness of various levels of incentives in gaining increased initial cooperation, refusal conversion, and overall unit response rates. Approximately 79,000 telephone numbers were included in the experiment. The results of the experiment indicate that small cash incentives, used during initial contact stages of the interview process (the Screener stage), can be effective in improving unit response, at least for NHES collections. The following are appended: (1) Response Rate Calculation Methods; and (2) Logistic Regression Analysis. (Contains 23 tables, 4 figures, and 1 exhibit.)

This methodology report provides technical information about the development, design, and conduct of the third grade data collection of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). Detailed information on the development of the instruments, sample design, data collection methods, data preparation and editing, response rates, and weighting and variance estimation is included. This report is organized into the following chapters: (1) Introduction; (2) Development of Survey Instruments; (3) Sample Design and Implementation; (4) Data Collection Methods; (5) Data Preparation and Editing; (6) Response Rates; and (7) Weighting and Variance Estimation. Individual chapters contain references. (Contains 65 tables and 29 exhibits.)

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a telephone survey of the noninstitutionalized civilian population of the United States that collects data on educational issues that are best explored through contact with households rather than with institutions. In the 1996 NHES (NHES:96) the topical components of interest were parent and family involvement in education and civic involvement. This report examines errors arising from interviewing respondents in the Parent and Family Involvement and Civic Involvement (PFI/CI) and the Youth Civic Involvement (YCI) components of the NHES:96. The estimates from these components and every survey are subject to both sampling error and nonsampling error. Sampling errors, the differences between population values and the sample estimates that arise because data are obtained from only a sample population, are generally well understood, but nonsampling errors arise from a variety of sources and are more difficult to measure. Important components of nonsampling errors for the NHES:96 include coverage, nonresponse, and measurement errors. The reinterview program was designed to identify survey questions that were not reliable, quantify the magnitude of the response variance for groups of questions collected from the same respondent at different times, and to provide feedback to improve the NHES for future surveys. A sample of 1,808 interviews (854 parent and 954 youth) was selected for reinterview. In all, 806 parent and 892 youth reinterviews were completed. Overall, both reinterview analyses indicate that the impact of measurement error on the estimates is low to moderate, as measured by the gross difference rates. In addition, the net difference rates support the use of the gross difference rates as measures of response variance. The reinterviews served their major purposes of finding questions with high error rates and providing feedback to improve the design of future questions. An appendix contains the reinterview questionnaires. (Contains 10 tables, 1 exhibit, and 7 references.) (SLD)

The 1996 National Household Education Survey (NHES:96) was a random digit dial telephone survey of households that was developed by the National Center for Education Statistics and conducted by Westat, Inc. The NHES:96 included two topical survey components, "Parent and Family Involvement in Education," (PFI) which collected data about family involvement in children's schooling, and "Civic Involvement," (CI) which collected data about participation in civic activities and attitudes toward government. This manual provides documentation and guidance for users of the four public release data files of the NHES:96: the Household and Library File, the PFI and CI files, the Youth Civic Involvement file, and the Adult Civic Involvement File. Volume I contains information about the purpose of the study, the data collection instruments, the sample design, and data collection and data processing procedures. Volumes II through V each contain a guide to the data file and its codebook, a discussion of data considerations and anomalies, and, in appendixes, the file layout and additional information. This volume contains the following sections: (1) "Introduction"; (2) "Description of Data Collection Instruments"; (3) "Sample Design and Implementation"; (4) "Data Collection Methods and Response Rates"; and (5) "Data Preparation." An appendix presents the screener for the four files. (Contains 1 figure, 17 tables and 25 references.) (SLD)

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection system of the National Center for Education Statistics that collects and publishes data on the condition of education in the United States. It is a telephone survey of the noninstitutionalized population of the country, and it focuses on issues that are best studied through contacting households rather than institutions. The primary purpose of the NHES is to conduct repeated measures of the same phenomena at different points in time. Full-scale implementations of the NHES have been conducted in 1991, 1993, 1995, and 1996. This paper presents information on the NHES:93 survey design, data collection procedures, monitoring of interviews, interview administration time, and data editing. The 1993 NHES addressed readiness for school and safety and discipline in school. The School Readiness component covered a number of experiences of preschool children that have a bearing on readiness to start school. This survey used interviews with parents to sample 10,888 children aged 3 through 7, or in second grade and below. The School Safety and Discipline component focused on school environment, school safety, school discipline policy, and alcohol and other drug use and education. For this component, parents of 12,680 children in grades 3 through 12. The following sections are included: (1) "Overview of the National Household Education Survey"; (2) "Monitoring Interviews in the NHES:93"; (3) "Survey Administration Time for the NHES:93"; and (4) "NHES:93 Data Editing." Three appendixes contain a monitoring form, 22 graphs of monitoring results, and a database design diagram. (Contains 3 figures, 12 tables, and 17 references.) (SLD)

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection system of the National Center for Education Statistics. It focuses on educational issues that are best addressed by contacting individual households rather than institutions. The primary purpose of the NHES is to conduct repeated measurements of the same phenomena at different points in time. In 1991, the NHES collected information about the school readiness of children up to grade 2 and about school safety and discipline. This paper presents information on unit response, weighting, item response, and imputation in the 1993 NHES. The section on "Unit Response in the NHES:93" describes responses and completion rates for the NHES:93, including data on these rates for the Screener Interview, the extended School Readiness interviews, and the extended School Safety and Discipline interviews broken down for parents and students. "Weighting and Estimation" discusses the procedures used for producing the weights to estimate characteristics from the NHES:93 sample and to estimate sampling errors for those estimates. "Item Response in the NHES:93" presents item response rates for the NHES:93 questionnaire and discusses the methodology used to compute response rates. "Imputation in the NHES:93" describes the imputation procedures used in this survey, which was the first NHES survey to impute all missing values. (Contains 19 tables and 7 references.) (SLD)

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection effort of the National Center for Education Statistics that collects and publishes data on the condition of education in the United States. The NHES is designed to provide information on issues that are best addressed by contacting households rather than institutions. It is a telephone survey of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population that collects repeated measurements of the same phenomena at different times. This paper presents information on the unit response rates, item response rates, and imputation. The first section, "Unit Response Rates," describes response and completion rates for the NHES:95. It includes information on rates for the Screener interview and the extended Early Childhood Participation and Adult Education interviews. These topics were the focus of NHES:95. Some 14,064 children were sampled for the Early Childhood component, and 3,569 adults completed the Adult Education interview. "Item Response and Imputation" discusses the approach taken to missing responses. As in most surveys, responses to some data items were not obtained for all interviews. The imputation of missing data is discussed. "Weighting and Standard Error Calculation Procedures" describes the procedures for producing the weights to estimate characteristics from the NHES:95 sample and to estimate sampling errors for those estimates. Methods for estimation were developed that were consistent with changes from the original weighting plan made during the collection period. (Contains 27 tables and 8 references.) (SLD)

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection system of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which has as its mission the collection and publication of data on the condition of education in the United States by providing information on those issues that are best addressed by contacting households rather than educational institutions. The NHES is a telephone survey of the noninstitutionalized civilian population of the United States. This paper addresses issues associated with the bias that might arise in estimates from the 1993 NHES because only households with telephones were sampled, and it assesses the data quality of recorded interviews from the survey. The focus in the study of bias is on the potential for bias in statistics for 3- to 7-year-olds corresponding to the School Readiness component population of the NHES:93. The analysis of undercoverage bias shows that the coverage bias for statistics on this age group is not large, even though large differences are reported for children living in telephone or nontelephone households. Results of the study of recorded interview data coverage indicate that the majority of the questions were read as written by the interviewer and respondents provided a codable response. Specific items that resulted in a greater than average number of problems are identified. Four appendixes contain the interview coding forms and frequency of rating information for the School Readiness Questionnaire, the School Safety and Discipline Parent Questionnaire, and the School Safety and Discipline Youth Questionnaire. (Contains 1 exhibit, 2 figures, and 17 tables.) (SLD)

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection system of the National Center for Education Statistics. The NHES is a telephone survey of the noninstitutionalized civilian population using households selected using random digit dialing methods. Approximately 60,000 households are screened for each administration, and people who meet predetermined criteria are sampled for more detailed or extended interviews. This report is a continuation of research on issues related to biases that result from the inability to survey people who are in households without telephones. It describes a study of an alternative method for adjusting telephone survey data to compensate for coverage bias. The method is based on the observation that telephone subscription varies within households over time. Weighting adjustments that use the data from households that have telephones only sometimes during the year might be an improvement over the current way of adjusting data. Findings indicate that coverage bias associated with households without telephones could be important for some statistics, and data collected on telephone service interruptions can be used to reduce this bias by using a response probability type of adjustment. The benefits of the bias reduction appear to be large enough to offset the variance increases due to increased variability in the weights in the study, although the results may differ for different size samples. Further research is needed, however, before the procedure can be recommended. (Contains 8 tables, 7 figures, and 10 references.) (SLD)

This manual provides documentation and guidance for users of the public release data file for the School Safety and Discipline component of the 1993 National Household Education Survey (NHES:93). Information about the purpose of the study, the data collection instruments, the sample design, and data collection and processing is presented. The NHES:93 was a random digit dial telephone survey of households developed by the National Center for Education Statistics and conducted by Westat, Inc. For the safety and discipline component, interviews were conducted with 12,680 parents of students in grades 3 through 12 and with 6,504 students in grades 6 through 12. The NHES:93 addressed readiness for school and safety and discipline in school through questions about the school environment. Chapter 1 introduces the survey, while chapter 2 describes the survey instrument. Sample design and implementation are in chapter 3, and chapter 4 considers data collection and response rate. Data preparation is described in chapter 5, and use of the file and codebook are explained in chapter 6. Data anomalies are described in chapter 7. Five appendixes provide the instruments, a list of variables, a guide to files and codes, and the codebook. Eleven tables and three figures illustrate the manual. (SLD)

This manual provides documentation and guidance for users of the public release data files (adult file and course file) for Adult Education (AE) component of the 1991 National Household Education Survey (NHES:91). The NHES:91 was a random-digit dial telephone survey developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and conducted by Westat, Inc. Data for the full-scale study were collected between late January and early May of 1991. The collection of data directly from non-institutional samples of individuals is a new initiative for the NCES and holds the promise of greatly enhancing the scope of issues covered by the NCES by providing information on many current issues in education. There were two general components of the NHES:91. The first of these was the Early Childhood Education component, concerned with the experiences of 3- to 8-year-old children. The second component pertained to the participation in adult education of persons aged 16 years and older. The introductory chapter, of the manual provides overviews of these components as well as information about the purpose of the study, the sample design, and data collection and data processing procedures. Following the introduction (chapter 1) the other chapters are: (2) "Description of Data Collection Instruments"; (3) "Sample Design and Implementation"; (4) "Data Collection Methods and Response Rates"; (5) "Data Preparation"; (6) "Guide to the Data Files and Codebooks"; and (7) "Data Anomalies." Six tables and four figures supplement the text. Six appendixes, comprising the greater part of the document, provide the NHES:91 questionnaire, adult file and course file variable lists, SAS and SPSS-X control cards, guidelines for using SAS and SPSS-X, SAS codes for composite variables, and adult file and course file codebooks. (SLD)