May 3 -- The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) invites comment by July 5, 2022 regarding the draft 2023-24 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:24) Field Test—Institution Contacting and List Collection.
This request is to conduct the 2023-24 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study Institution Contacting and List Collection Field Test (NPSAS:24 FT). This study is being conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), part of the U.S. Department of Education. This submission covers materials and procedures related to institution sampling, enrollment list collection, and matching to administrative data files as part of the NPSAS:24 FT data collection, and includes details about the full-scale institution sampling and enrollment list data collection. NCES will submit a separate clearance package covering the student FT data collection, including the student record data abstraction and student surveys, in the summer of 2022.
The materials and procedures for NPSAS:24 are based on those developed for previous institution-based data collections, including the 2019-20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:20), and the 2017-18 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study Administrative Collection (NPSAS:18-AC). The first NPSAS was implemented by NCES during the 1986-87 academic year to meet the need for national data about significant financial aid issues. Since 1987, NPSAS has been fielded every 2 to 4 years, most recently during the 2019-20 academic year (NPSAS:20).
NPSAS:24 will be nationally-representative. The NPSAS:24 field test sample size will be 6,000 students, and the full-scale sample will include 137,000 nationally representative undergraduate and 25,000 nationally representative graduate students who will be asked to complete a survey and for whom we will collect student records and administrative data. If the full-scale budget allows, we will include state-representative sampling for the full-scale collection, and provide the budget for a state-representative sampling plan in the 30-day full-scale package, planned for 2023. Also, if exercised, NPSAS:24 will serve as the base year for the 2024 cohort of the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) Longitudinal Study and will include a nationally representative sample of students who will complete requirements for the bachelor's degree during the NPSAS year (i.e., completed at some point between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023 for the field test and July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 for the full-scale).
Subsets of questions in the student survey will focus on describing aspects of the experience of students in their last year of postsecondary education, including student debt and education experiences. This submission is designed to adequately justify the need for and overall practical utility of the full study, presenting the overarching plan for all of the phases of the institution sampling and enrollment list data collection and providing as much detail about the measures to be used as is available at the time of this submission.
NPSAS webpage:
https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/npsas/
NPSAS:24 draft forms and technical documentation:
https://www.regulations.gov/docket/ED-2022-SCC-0059/document
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2022-09416