A Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) Data

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

The present project will support a training workshop on the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) data set for advanced graduate students, early career scholars, and other interested researchers. Since 1987, LSAY has followed a national probability sample of 7th and 10th grade public school students, and is the longest-running and most comprehensive data set available to examine the factors that contribute to student and young adult interest in and understanding of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. The LSAY is distinctive in its measurement of home, school, peer, and community variables over more than two decades, making it ideal for analyses that seek to understand the interaction between and among these factors. The comprehensive and longitudinal nature of the LSAY data set can present challenges to researchers unfamiliar with LSAY, such as the breadth of measures and the particular statistical procedures appropriate for analyses of change over time. To address this, this project will recruit 20 researchers for a 5-day workshop, hosted by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. Topics will include: (1) an introduction to the structure of the LSAY data set; (2) participants' achievement in science and mathematics, including the psychometric basis for these measures; (3) the coding of the many open-ended items in the LSAY; (4) the presence and use of geographic and location data; (5) measurement errors in repeated, longitudinal studies, and appropriate methods to address such errors.