The PRI Library has received announcement of a NCES and ECLS datasets training seminar at the 2008 PAA annual meeting in New Orleans.

The National Center for Education Statistics has released the first report using data from the third wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a study of a nationally representative sample of children born in the year 2001. The report provides a range of information about these children when they were about 4 years old.

Click here to download, view and print the publication as a PDF file.

The PRI Library has received a conference announcement from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research for their 2007 ECLS-B conference.

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.

The PRI Library has received an announcement from The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for a 3-day advanced studies seminar on the use of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) database.

The NCES has made available the Age 2 ECLS-B wave. Only the Restricted data are available at this time. To order the data, go to the NCES website.

The NCES has released findings from the ECLS-B, age 2. The first wave of data are from participants at 9 months of age, the second wave is at age 2. ECLS-B will collect data through Kindergarten entry.

Mothers are not alone in being susceptible to postpartum depression—new fathers may suffer from it as well, according to a study published in Pediatrics (PubMed abstract). The study authors used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) on more than 5,000 two-parent families. (CNN.com, August 9, 2006)

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Fathers of U.S. Children Born in 2001: Findings from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), E.D. Tab is a new report from NCES that presents information about resident and nonresident biological fathers, including demographic characteristics, involvement, and attitudes about fathering.