Background: Statements or commitments making use of numbers have an important place in government policy. They appear at all stages of the policy process: campaigning, formulation, monitoring and evaluation. Many types of sources are involved including research studies, national survey information, routine operational data collections and special…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) program develops geographic data to help policymakers, program administrators, and the public understand relationships between educational institutions and the communities they serve. One of the commonly used geographic data items is the NCES…

Objective: It is useful to examine workplace factors influencing employment outcomes of individuals with disabilities and the interplay of disability, employment-related, and employer characteristics to inform rehabilitation practice. Design: A number of large national survey and administrative data sets provide information on employers and can…

There has been a significant increase in the use of secondary data sets. Many such data sets purport to be nationally representative. Secondary data sets include research commissioned by the National Center for Education Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control, and other public entities. Research increasingly utilizes these secondary data in…

Data on national employment for individual occupations and for selected industries are compiled. Short descriptions of the data sources are also given. Sections are titled (1) Occupational Data Based on Monthly Surveys of Households, (2) Occupation by Industry Statistics from Population Censuses, (3) Occupational Employment Data from Professional…

Data on people with disabilities can be used to confirm service needs and to evaluate the resulting impact of services. Disability statistics from surveys and administrative records can play a meaningful role in such efforts. In this article, the authors describe the array of available data and statistics and their potential uses in rehabilitation…

This volume consists of an index of questions repeated in public opinion surveys, and the variants of these questions. The questions included are drawn from American national samples (primarily of the general population) conducted by AIPO (Gallup) NORC, and Roper, and archived at the Roper Public Opinion Research Center. The basic data for over 90…

This brief, semi-technical handbook describes the various data systems of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) with summaries of background, purpose and scope, sample design, data collection procedures, questionnaire content, data release, and data uses for individual NCHS surveys. NCHS operates a diverse survey and inventory program…

Describes the historical and current roles that educational statistics play in the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the National Library of Education. Discusses helpful sources of educational statistics, including population, economic, and education surveys; census results; school district directories; reports of school…

A survey of institutions concerning their reporting of data on the Higher Education General Information Survey and specifically examining the differences in definitions and calculations among reporting institutions, confirmed suspected problems of comparability of information. The impact of these differences on data interpretation is discussed.…

This report provides comparisons among the social indicator reports of seven countries including Canada, France, Great Britain, Japan, Norway, the United States, and West Germany. The purpose of social indicator research in each country is to provide a means for developing more adequate answers to the questions over present and emerging social…

The office of institutional research at West Virginia University, an intergral part of the university's office of planning, annually produces a fact book called "Statistical Profiles of West Virginia University." The book is used as a source of information for planning, and contains information on six topics: the university's mission; programs;…

This compendium provides a guide to data collections in higher education focusing on sources that are national in scope, and updated and made available on a regular or periodic basis including surveys, data bases, reports, and statistical digests. These sources are divided into nine broad categories, each category contains separate entries for…

A national survey was made to collect data about the information/communication industries in the United States today. Eleven industries were studied: television, radio, telephone, telegraph, postal service, newspaper, periodical, book publishing and printing, motion pictures, computer software, and cable television. The data collection scheme used…

Information on postsecondary education in the 50 states and the District of Columbia is organized in four main parts: (1) narrative description of the state-level coordinating or governing agency, institutional governing boards, current master planning activities, the 1202 commission, state student assistance agency or agencies, state board of…