The estimates presented in this report were produced using the NCES Data Analysis Systems (DAS) for the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, Second Follow-up for the two BPS surveys (BPS:90/04 and BPS:96/01). The DAS software makes it possible for users to specify and generate their own tables. With the DAS, users can replicate or expand upon the tables presented in this report; the table parameter files (tpf) that produced these tables are available to users on the NCES website. In addition to the table estimates, the DAS calculates proper standard errors⁵ and weighted sample sizes for these estimates. If the number of valid cases is too small to produce a reliable estimate (less than 30 cases), the DAS prints the message “low-N” instead of the estimate. All standard errors for estimates presented in this report can be viewed at http://nces.ed.gov/das/library/reports.asp.

In addition to tables, the DAS can also produce a correlation matrix of selected variables to be used for linear regression models. Included in the output with the correlation matrix are the design effects (DEFTs) for each variable in the matrix. Since statistical procedures generally compute regression coefficients based on simple random sample assumptions, the standard errors must be adjusted with the design effects to take into account the BPS:96/01 sample design.

The DAS can be accessed electronically at http://nces.ed.gov/das. For more information about the BPS Data Analysis Systems, contact:

Aurora D’Amico
National Center for Education Statistics
1990 K Street, NW
Room 8115
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 502-7334
Internet address: Aurora.D’Amico@ed.gov