Public Use Data Release

Public Use Data

The NLSF data are available for Wave 1, the baseline survey with detailed information on student’s background, such as family structure, neighborhood and school characteristics, at age 6, 12, and one year prior to entering college. Wave 1 also includes information about student’s preparation for college, peer networks, and racial/ethnic attitudes. Wave 1 data include summary variables about the respondent's household. A separate file (household roster) contains information about each household member.

In July 2005, we added two new files for public release. First, we released the indices presented in tables B1-B12 of Source of the River. Second, we released an institutional characteristics file that contains detailed information about the schools each respondent attended, such as their racial make-up and average class size, measured both in 2001-2002 and 1998-1998. Each of these files can be merged to the public dataset using the respondent’s unique case ID.

Waves 2 and 3 were released in September 2006. Wave 2 contains detailed information about courses taken, grades earned, social networks, time use, living arrangements, financial matters, relationships, and students’ perceptions of prejudice on campus. Wave 3 contains much of the same information, plus the factors in the students’ decision to attend college, information on high school SAT scores, majors chosen, career plans, and employment while in school. As with the other files, wave 2 and wave 3 can each be merged to the baseline data (Wave 1) using the respondent's unique case ID.

Waves 4 and 5 were released in June 2008. Both waves contain similar information as waves 2 and 3 for the junior and senior years and can be merged to previous waves using the respondent's unique case ID. Apart from detailed information about courses taken, grades earned, and degree expectations, wave 4 contains information about summer jobs, living arrangements, extracurricular group involvement, mentoring in high school as well as personal health and emotional problems. Wave 5 contains additional information about students’ majors, minors, and the achieved grade point average, terms studied abroad, college debts, plans for employment and higher education as well as respondents’ perception of the own/other racial and ethnic groups in terms of identity, incidences of discrimination and prejudice, as well as certain opinions and behavior. 

Graduation Data have been drawn from two principal sources: offices of the registrar at the 28 colleges and universities in the NLSF, and the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nonprofit organization providing post-secondary and secondary student degree, diploma and enrollment verification. By analyzing and cross-checking these references over a period of two years (2005-2006), the NLSF team collected concrete graduation data for 3,914 out of 3,924 total students. Of these, 86.5% of students graduated college within 6 years, 68.7% of them receiving degrees on-time by the spring of 2003. 

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