Files for Electronic Codebook (ECB) User's Guide available in HTML Format Part I Introduction and Overview Contents of the Fall 1994 NELS:88 CD-ROM NELS:88 Data File User Manual Files-- "\DOCU" NELS:88 Raw Data File Files-- "\DATA" Part II Installation and Operation of the Fall 1994 NELS:88 BY-F1-F2 Where and What Needs to be Copied? Space Requirements Copying the ECB Software to Your PC Basic Features of the ECB System Edits for SAS and SPSS Output Code Extract.EXE--A Handy Little Subsetting Program Part III Appendix A--Differences between the Fall 1994 NELS:88 BY-F2 ECB/CD-ROM and the December 1993 NELS:88 Y F2 Interim ECB/CD-ROM Appendix B--Summary of NELS:88 Analytical Populations Appendix C--Extracting Raw Data Through EXTRACT.EXE Appendix D--Examples of Output fro the NELS:88 ECB Appendix D1--Tag List Appendix D2-- SAS/PC CODE Appendix D3--SPSS/PC+Code ****You WILL need to edit this code**** Apendix D4 Appendix D5 --Codebook Text File NEL eXtract Appendix E --Glossary of Commands

Introduction

This document is the User's Guide for the 1994 fall release of the Base Year through Second follow-up (BY-F2) surveys of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) on CD- ROM. The primary purpose of this guide is to instruct users in the operation of the NELS:88 CD-ROM and the electronic codebook (ECB) system included on the compact disc. A second purpose of this guide, and, one that is of no less importance, is to inform users of the contents of the compact disc--the different data and documentation files contained within. The contents of the NELS:88 BY-F2 CD-ROM are described in the first section of this guide (page 3). Procedures for installing and operating the ECB system are provided in the second section of this guide (page 8).

Overview of the NELS:88 ECB System

The electronic codebook (ECB) system is primarily that, an electronic version of a codebook that displays question text and frequency distributions of all the variables (questionnaire items and composites) contained on a NELS:88 data file. The NELS:88 BY-F2 ECB system, however, does much more than electronically display the questionnaire text and frequency distributions of the approximately 7,000 variables contained on the 15 data files that comprise the NELS:88 BY-F2 dataset.

Specifically, the NELS:88 ECB system is a software program through which users select options that perform the following functions:

• electronic display of a list of all the variables contained on the 15 NELS BY-F2 data files;
• electronic search of the list of variables based upon key words or variable names/labels for variables of interest;
• electronic display of the question text of each variable in the database;
• electronic display of unweighted frequencies and weighted frequencies and percents of each variable in the database;
• selection of variables (tagging) of interest for subsequent generation of a codebook or SAS-PC, SPSS-PC+, or SPSS for Windows program code;
• generation of a codebook of selected variables; and
• generation of SAS-PC, SPSS-PC+ or SPSS for Windows program code for the selected variables to be used as an input file with users' own SAS or SPSS statistical software.

The NELS:88 ECB is designed to operate on IBM-compatible PCs equipped with compact disk (CD-ROM) readers. CD-ROM is a storage medium that can be read by the PC but not written to, thereby protecting the files it carries (ROM = Read-Only Memory). Both the software that controls the ECB and the NELS:88 BY-F2 raw data files reside on the CD-ROM. Finally, in order to use the SAS-PC, SPSS- PC+ or SPSS for Windows program code option, users must have access to, preferably, the PC versions of these statistical software packages, although the PC program code generated by the ECB can be modified for other platforms to which the user has access (e.g., mainframe version of SPSS). The ECB does not access NELS:88 data directly. Instead, the ECB system generates program code for creating a system file once the program code is run through the users' own SAS or SPSS software.

Michelle Harvey, Library Assistant, Documents Center
The University of Michigan Library
Send comments and suggestions to:
Grace York
CIC CD-ROM Technical Documentation Project

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/cicdoc/nels88/nels88a.htm