The current Scientific Use File (version 2.0.0, doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC8:2.0.0) expands the existing data by including the collected information from the second survey wave of the Starting Cohort of fifth graders from 2022 of the National Educational Panel Study. Newly added are data from surveyed and tested students at regular and special education schools who are now in grade 6. These surveys were primarily computer-based conducted in a school setting. Target children who could not be reached in the school setting or who were tracked individually received a separate survey. The competence modules used consisted of tasks in the domains of digital competence, ICT literacy, word-level listening comprehension, and general knowledge. Students with the corresponding language backgrounds did not complete the general knowledge tasks, but completed tasks on listening comprehension in Russian or Turkish instead. At special education schools, only the domains of digital competence, general knowledge, and word-level listening comprehension were tested. In the second survey wave, data collection took also place among the classroom teachers of the cooperating classes, as well as among those school administrations that had not been surveyed in the previous wave. Information was further gathered from the parents of the target children. Overall, the fieldwork period ranged from October 2023 to May 2024.
Detailed information on the implementation of the various sub-studies of this panel wave can be found in the Field Reports on the website in the section „Documentation“. The Data Manual is also available there as the central guide for understanding and working with the data. It is currently still in version 1.0.0, but will soon be updated and published. The Release Notes provide information on relevant hanges between the previous and the current Scientific Use File. Additional materials, such as the instruments and the codebook, as well as several reports regarding competency measures, weighting, and anonymization, complete the data documentation and are also available on the website linked below.
Starting Cohort 8: including documentation
NEPS Data Portfolio including download
NEPS Data Access including application forms