Memo #44

  NOTES ON CLEANING EDUCATION VARIABLES IN 1977 SIBLING STUDY

Written:  June, 1978
Revised:  July, 1999


Question 1: "What is the highest grade or year of regular school  
            you have ever attended?"

    If R had attended college, this question quite frequently
failed to get a response that was consistent with other responses
in the education section.  For example, if R pursued a degree for
less than one year or R was currently enrolled, sometimes
Question 1 didn't indicate that a year was attended but not
completed. For these kinds of cases, Questions 1 and 1a were
adjusted for consistency.

    At least two Rs received an MD and substantially attended
college afterwards. One R had a highest attended level of 4th
grade and apparently later attended vocational school.  One
respondent received schooling in Europe.

Question 1a: "Did you finish that (grade/year) and get credit for 
             it?"

    This question was just skipped or wasn't recorded as answered
for a few cases. Most of these respondents had 12's on question 1
and questions 1b and 1c presumed that the 12th grade was
comp1eted, so question 1a was set to "yes" for these respondents.

Questions 1d, 2c, 3a, 4d,and 7a.

    Date variables were quite thoroughly checked, although there
were several problematic cases about which little could be done.

Question 2:  Did respondent attend the 9th grade or higher?

    A couple of cases were changed to reflect a strict
interpretation of "attend". If a respondent answered "8" to
question 1 and received a GED, response to question 2 should be
"no."

Question 2a:  "What was the name of the last high school you      
              attended?"

    If respondents's highest level attended is 9, the responses
to questions 2a through c may be about a junior high school.
Although junior high school codes were added to the code list, a
few junior high school responses were probably coded as a regular
high school with a similar name.

Question 4a:  "What is the name of your highest degree,           
              certificate, or diploma?"

    One respondent received a chef's degree from Milwaukee
Institute of Technology, which the respondent said was an
academic degree. Thus, it was left coded as such. Another
respondent took a 4 yr. post MD psychiatric specialty. This was
left as respondent's highest degree.

    Bachelor of Divinity degrees were a problem. It seems that
they are properly called professional degrees, so for the sib
study they were coded as graduate/professional degrees with 18
equivalent years. Note the difference from the 1975 study.

Questions 4b, 6a, and 7a:

    Major fields of study were coded with a different procedure
for the sibling study. A response was given a code in the list
only if the response matched the code description. This
eliminates the problem of having a code that indicates a specific
major field actually representing several major fields.  New
codes were not allocated or created for cases with "other" on
these questions. Researchers who want to use these variables
should do so in a way consistent with their particular purposes.
The alternative is a-large-scale revision of the coding scheme.

Questions 4c, 6, and 7b:

    These variables were checked for invalid values and corrected
for the problem noted in COR #253.

Question 8:  "Are you now enrolled in a formal program in a       
             university, college, or junior college?"

    We failed to include the possibility of current enrollment in
high school in the writing of question 8. It is unlikely that
there are many, if any, respondents who, at the time of the
interview, were in such a program.

Question 9e: "In what month and year did you begin this job?"     
             (referring to first civilian job).

    Several cases indicated starting a farm job at a very young
age, e.g., 7 years. These responses were not changed.

Question 11: "Did you start this job while you were still in      
             school?"

    This question was asked only of respondents who gave
beginning dates from their first jobs that were earlier than the
date of completing highest grade in school.  Most of the cases
which were "no" to this question were respondents who had
received a GED.

Question 12a: "How many such programs have you taken?"            
              (referring to programs other than regular school    
              such as apprenticeships or formal programs in a     
              business or technical or vocational institute,
              such as drafting, nursing, secretarial, or          
              electronics).

    There are about a dozen cases with extremely large numbers of
programs. If only formal programs are counted, these responses
are probably wrong. However, nothing could be done to correct
this in cleaning.

Question 12c: "What type of training did you take?" (regarding    
              the longest program).

    Some respondents reported programs that were apparently
apprenticeships but were not noted as being such in question 12c.
These were not changed on the apprenticeship flag (VO195).

Question 12g: "For how many weeks or months did you participate   
              in this training?"

    The fact that several responses are of less than 6 months is
accounted for by drop outs and currently ongoing training.

Question 13b: "What is the highest grade of regular school you    
              had completed before you first entered active       
              military service?"

    Only a few cases were problems here.