Telephone Coverage Bias and Recorded Interviews in the 1993 National Household Education Survey (NHES:93). Working Paper Series.

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)