The National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) is a telephone survey conducted for the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Data collections have taken place from January through early May in 1991 and January through April in 1993, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2007. When appropriately weighted, each sample is nationally representative of all civilian, noninstitutionalized persons in the 50 states and District of Columbia. The samples were selected using randomdigit- dialing (RDD) methods, and the data were collected using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) technology.
Data from five administrations of the NHES were used in this report—the School Readiness Survey and the School Safety and Discipline Survey of the 1993 NHES, the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the 1996 NHES, the Parent Survey of the 1999 NHES, and the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the 2003 and 2007 NHES. A screening questionnaire administered to a member of the household age 18 or older was used to determine whether any students of the appropriate age lived in the household, to collect age and grade information on each child, and to identify the appropriate parent or guardian to respond for the sampled child. More detailed, extended interviews were conducted about each sampled child. Each interview was conducted with the parent or guardian most knowledgeable about the care and education of the sampled child. This report is based on subsets of the total sample in each of the survey years, specifically, students in 1st through 12th grades, unless otherwise noted. The 1993 data were collected in two separate extended interviews—the School Readiness Survey for children age three through 7 or in 2nd grade or below and the School Safety and Discipline Survey for students in 3rd grade through 12th grade. Data from these two files were merged to provide information on students in 1st through 12th grades.