Several previous studies have relied on religious affiliation and proximity to Catholic schools as exogenous sources of variation for identifying the effect of Catholic schooling on a wide variety of outcomes. Using three separate approaches, this study examined the validity of these instrumental variables. Evidence was obtained on the validity of…

The "National Longitudinal Study (NLS) of the High School Class of 1972: Base Year (1972) through Fourth Follow-up (1979)" machine-readable data file (MRDF) is a single merged file of student responses to the original interviews or tests in 1972 and the mail follow-up surveys of 1973, 1974, 1976, and 1979. The 1972 data were gathered by…

This book examines the educational and occupational choices that 1972 high school graduates made over the succeeding 15 years, focusing on how postsecondary education has made a difference in their lives. It uses data collected for the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72), which has tracked a representative sample…

This document supports the survey questionnaire to be administered to a sample of over 22,000 young adults in the second follow-up of the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. Data collection activities were scheduled to start in October 1974 and be completed by March 1975. The field test of the survey questionnaire,…

This report offers a series of transcript-based portraits of traditional-age community college students. As of 2001, students under the age of 22 constituted 42 percent of all credit-seeking students in community colleges and those under the age of 24 constituted nearly three-fourths of first-time community college students. As the baby-boom echo…

This is a report on the data collection activities of the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972(NLS). This phase of the operation involved the first follow-up contact with the 22,654 seniors selected for participation in this study. The fieldwork for the first follow-up was scheduled between July 1973 and January 1974; it…

The National Longitudinal Study (NLS) of the High School Class of 1972 collected data on the attributes of students attending postsecondary institutions. The NLS also collected the names of any postsecondary institutions this cohort of students attended and/or applied to during the first two years after high school. In order to provide a link…

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) was contracted by the National Center for Education Statistics to investigate changes in tested achievement using cross-sectional comparisons between the 1972 National Longitudinal Study (NLS) seniors and the 1980 High School and Beyond (HSB) senior cohort. The ETS is also responsible for estimating the extent…