Looking for Educational Outcome Data

Question

A student here is looking for data that will allow her to find educational outcomes for all members of a family, even those who are no longer living within the same household. She wants to test the theory that the highest level of education achieved by each child depends in part on the number of children within the family.

I’ve come up dry: do you know of any data that would allow her to do this study?

She has considered, and rejected, using the NLSY from the United States, since many of the children of the 1979 cohort have not yet completed their education. Would the Panel Study of Income Dynamics let her do this?

Answer

I just wanted to let you know that I did check with our Education Division on this one, just to be sure. They confirmed that the data are not available through them.

NGS (National Graduates Survey)/FOG PUMFs

Question

Could we get an update on when/if a pumf is likely, please? Researchers are starting to see publications based on the RDC data, and want to be able to verify/expand these analyses, but can't, which is frustrating for both the researchers as well as us. If they can't verify the results, they often won't quote them or use them in teaching either, which sort of defeats the purpose of doing the surveys in the first place.

And no, a couple of excel tables of aggregate stats from the 2005 FOG is not a sufficient sop.

Answer

The latest information we have about the availability of pumfs from either the NGS 2000 or FOG 2005 is:

"pumf in March 2004 (dlilist 2003/02/03);"
"availability of a public use microdata file uncertain, maybe by spring
2006 (dlilist 2005/09/19);"
"April 2006 (dlilist 2006/01/19);"
"Production of a pumf currently on hold due to workload (dlilist
2006/07/12); "

Graduate Salary Information

Question

I had thought that this would be an easy find--my mistake. If it should have been an easy find, my apologies. I think that the information is likely in ESIS (Enhanced Student Information System), but this doesn't appear to be part of the DLI collection. Is there any way to get the following information short of paying for a custom tab?

I would like to know the average salary after 2 years (or 3 or 4 or 5 years) for people graduating with a BA in communication in Canada. Several years ago, a sessional we had hired in Mass Communication had extracted that information from Statistics Canada.

His information compared the salaries of people who had a BA in communication with those who had a community college degree with those who had a BA and then went to college. In all cases, the straight BA came out significantly ahead (especially when compounded over 10 or 20 years). He had the statistics after 2 years, after 5 and after 10.

Answer

ESIS would not be the best source for this information as it tends to be administrative data from the universities themselves. However, I am not sure if you looked at the National Graduate Survey (NGS) or the follow-up surveys?

If the information can not be found in the PUMF, a custom extraction can be done - but starting at $1000 and taking weeks to complete.

1995 is the most recent NGS data we have in the DLI collection. The production of NGS 2000 is still on hold (but I heard they are actually working towards it, but it is at the bottom of a long list of priorities. We will see some basic tables and analysis at some point, the release of custom tables which will be provided free of charge to the DLI, and then the PUMF). No date provided.

The best I can offer is that there is a Master file for 2000 and the user can order custom tabulations at a fee. There is no data yet
available for 2005.