NCES is moving to a new Center-wide system for making data available to the general public. The ECLS-B data are now available without a restricted-use license in a data analysis system, or DAS. The ECLS-B DAS can be accessed here: http://www.nces.ed.gov/dasol/tables/#household Also, below is some information specific to the ECLS-B that users should know. NCES is working on getting this information on the web, but it is not up yet.

The ECLS-B DAS application currently contains 9-month variables that are available in the 9-month-2-year restricted-use data file (NCES 2006-044). Data from later waves of the ECLS-B (i.e., 2-year, preschool, and kindergarten collections) will be added in the future. Some variables that are not analytically useful in the context of the DAS have been omitted. Users are strongly encouraged to review the description screens for the variables they are interested in examining, because this screen has important information about the variables, including: an explanation of the variable, the questionnaire item to which the variable pertains, the respondents who were asked the question, the variable’s range of values, and weighted frequencies for each value. For composite variables, this screen also contains detailed information about how the variable was created.

In addition to reviewing the variable description screens, users are strongly encouraged to use the DAS in conjunction with the ECLS-B questionnaires, which can be accessed here: http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/BirthInstruments.asp. Variables appear in the DAS in questionnaire order (after the composite variables), by questionnaire section. Reviewing the questionnaires will help users better understand the flow of the interview, the groups of respondents who answered specific questions, and the context in which specific questions were asked. This is particularly important as some of the skip patterns are complex. The label for each variable begins with the questionnaire item number, which makes it easy for users to locate the question to which each variable pertains.

A handful of variables have been transformed to be compatible with the reporting capabilities of the DAS. For example, the values for the variable indicating child’s assessment age (in months), which are reported to one decimal place in the restricted-use data file, were multiplied by 10 to be reported as whole numbers in the DAS. All such transformations are thoroughly described in the variable’s description screen. Please note that as a result of these transformations, estimates produced from the DAS will differ from estimates in published NCES reports and elsewhere that are produced from the restricted-use file.