The Census Bureau conducts the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). SASS is composed of a set of integrated self-administered surveys designed to obtain national information on all aspects of the school system. The Teacher Listing Form (TLF) is the first in the SASS series. It is sent to the principal early in the school year asking for a listing of all the teachers at the school. It is used to select teachers from the school to participate in the SASS. In 1994, a study, known as the Teacher List Validity Study (TLVS), was undertaken by the Demographic Statistical Methods Division to evaluate the quality of the data reported on the TLF. Although the TLVA attempted to find out why the schools excluded certain teachers and included persons that should not have been included, unfortunately the study did not obtain very insightful reasons. The cognitive research we undertook attempted to uncover with greater understanding why respondents made the kinds of errors that they did so that we could make informed recommendations for correcting these errors in future TLFs.
Online Availability
