Title page
Contents
I. Overview 7
Purpose and Content of the Survey 7
Content of the Manual 7
II. Frame Creation 8
List Frame 8
Area Frame 8
Weighting 9
Variance Estimation 9
Producing Replicate Weights 9
Applying Replicate Weights 10
Approximate Sampling Errors 11
III. Data Collection 13
Data Collection Procedures 13
Mailings 13
Nonresponse Follow-up 14
Interviewer Training 14
Efforts to increase Response Rates 14
Response Rates 15
Unit Response Rate 15
Item Response Rates 21
IV. Data Preparation 23
Questionnaire Check-in and Data Capture 23
Computer Pre-Edit 23
Computer Edit 23
Imputation 24
Donor Imputation 24
Analyst Imputation 24
Imputation Flags 24
V. Guide to the Public-Use Data File and Code Book 25
Categories of Variables 25
Composite Variables 26
Unique School Identifier 33
VI. User Notes and Cautions 34
Locale Code (Urbanicity) 34
Race/Ethnicity 34
References 35
Appendix A. 2017-18 Private School Universe Survey Questionnaire 36
Appendix B. List of Variables and Record Layout of the Tab-Delimited ASCII File of the 2017-18 PSS Public-Use Data 53
Appendix C. 2017-18 Private School Universe Survey Public-Use Codebook 64
Table 1. Average PSS design effects (DEFF) and square root of the average design effects (DEFT) by selected school characteristics: 2017-18 12
Table 2. PSS data collection time schedule: 2017-18 13
Table 3. Number of responding and nonresponding schools, out-of-scope cases, and school response rate, by frame: 2017-18 15
Table 4. Summary of 2017-18 PSS nonresponse bias statistics 17
Table 5. Base-weighted PSS school frame distribution, interviewed distribution, estimated bias, percent relative bias, standard errors, and t statistic, by affiliation membership and... 18
Table 6. Final weighted PSS school frame distribution, interviewed distribution, estimated bias, percent relative bias, standard errors, and t statistic, by affiliation membership and... 20
Table 7. PSS item response rates for private schools: 2017-18 22