Educational & Student Data

Question

I have a few students who are working on an academic project where they want to get data on students (in most cases, postsecondary, but also secondary). They have found NELS from ICPSR and this seems to answer a lot of the questions they're looking at (they're investigating things like dropout rates, impact of being an immigrant on student success, etc.). I don't think there is any comparable Canadian studies, but perhaps someone knows of something that I'm missing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. A couple of the students found the Youth in Transition Survey, but I understand this is not available for download.

Answer

The Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) may have some of the data your students require.

We have microdata files for cycles 1, 2 and 3 of NLSCY but it is my understanding that the population that is in those cycles wouldn't be in high school yet so they probably won't help your students. We also have synthetic files for both NLSCY
(http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/nlscy.htm)
and YITS in the DLI collection, but your students couldn't use these to obtain estimates for analysis as these synthetic files contain modified data. The students would need to prepare computer programs that would be run against the master file by the author division through remote job submission or use the master files through the RDCs if they meet the eligibility criteria.

Your students may wish to consult the publications that are based on the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). You can access many of these from links that are under Links to related products on the left side bar on these pages in the IMDB:

YITS: http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=4435&lang=en&db=IMDB&dbg=f&adm=8&dis=2
NLSCY: http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=4450&lang=en&db=IMDB&dbg=f&adm=8&dis=2

Some of these publications discuss dropout rates and one of these also compares "high school graduates and dropouts on a number of dimensions, including family background, parental education and occupation, engagement with school, working during high school, peer influence, and educational aspirations" (see "At a Crossroads: First Results for the 18-20-year-old Cohort of the Youth in Transition Survey" for example
http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=81-591-X).