The Postsecondary Education Quick Information System (PEQIS) was established in 1991 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. Department of Education. PEQIS is designed to conduct brief surveys of postsecondary institutions or state higher education agencies on postsecondary education topics of national importance. Surveys are generally limited to three pages of questions, with a response burden of 30 to 45 minutes per respondent. Most PEQIS institutional surveys use a previously recruited, nationally representative panel of institutions. The PEQIS panel was originally selected and recruited in 1991–92. In 1996, 2002, 2006, and 2011, the PEQIS panel was reselected to reflect changes in the postsecondary education universe that had occurred since the original panel was selected. A modified Keyfitz approach was used to maximize overlap between the panels for each reselection. This approach resulted in about 80 percent of the institutions overlapping for each reselection of the panel (Brick, Morganstein, and Wolters 1987).
The 2011 PEQIS survey on dual enrollment programs and courses for high school students used the sampling frame for the 2011 PEQIS panel, which was constructed from the 2009–10 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Institutional Characteristics file. Institutions eligible for the 2011 PEQIS frame included 2-year and 4-year (including graduate-level) institutions that are both Title IV eligible and degree-granting, and are located in the 50 states and the District of Columbia: a total of 4,485 institutions. The 2011 PEQIS sampling frame was stratified by instructional level (4-year, 2-year), control (public, private nonprofit, private for-profit), highest level of offering (doctor's/first-professional, master's, bachelor's, less than bachelor's), and total enrollment to create 43 primary strata. Within each of the strata, institutions were sorted by region (Northeast, Southeast, Central, West) and by whether the institution had a relatively high combined enrollment of Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, or American Indian/Alaska Native students. The sample of approximately 1,650 institutions was allocated to the strata in proportion to the aggregate square root of total enrollment. Institutions within a primary stratum were sampled with equal probabilities of selection.
Data are weighted to produce national estimates, and the sample size permits limited breakouts by analysis variables. However, as the number of categories within any single analysis variable increases, the sample size within categories decreases, which results in larger sampling errors for the breakouts by analysis variables.