DOI: 10.3886/icpsr07823
title: Project Talent Public Use File, 1960-1976
title: Archival Version

description: This data collection contains a representative portion of the data collected through Project TALENT, a longitudinal survey designed to investigate the personal, educational, and experiential factors that promote or inhibit the development of human talents. Seven specific objectives of this study were: (1) to inventory the pool of available talent for training in science, engineering, and other professional fields, (2) to assess the relationships among aptitudes, interests, and other factors, (3) to determine the extent to which lack of interest or motivation limit the development of individuals' talents, (4) to identify the main factors affecting vocational choice, (5) to identify predictors of creativity and productivity, (6) to assess the effectiveness of various types of educational experience, and (7) to provide a basis for developing procedures for realizing individuals' potential. Extensive data were obtained in 1960 from a sample of 400,000 students in grades 9-12 in the United States. Follow-up surveys were conducted one year, five years, and 11 years after high school graduation. This data collection contains data for a subsample (about 1 percent) of respondents made up of 4,000 of the original 400,000 Project TALENT participants (1,000 men and women from each of the high school classes of 1960-1963), all of whom had responded to the 11-year follow-up survey. Data obtained in the 1960 survey include each individual's cognitive test scores (e.g., language aptitude and ability, mathematics ability, visualization ability, complex intellectual aptitude, and general and specific knowledge), self-descriptive adjectives, occupational and activity interest inventory, family background (e.g., parents' education and occupation, economic status, number of siblings and their educational experience), personal information (health, high school activities, plans, sex, and date of birth), and description of school (e.g., kind, size, urban-rural, percent minority, and retention ratio). The 11-year follow-up data include individuals' post-high school education and work experiences, family development, plans and aspirations, life satisfaction, and decisions regretted. Follow-up personal information includes race, religion, marital status and history, spouses' education, number of children, health (own and parents'), geographical mobility, and military status and experience.
description: The codebook for this study includes a hard copy (and PDF version) of the Data Bank Handbook and additional documentation found on microfiche that is available from ICPSR upon request. The microfiche consists of five sections. Section 1 includes the Project TALENT Masterfile data file format, which documents the variables from the original survey and its two follow-up surveys. Section 2 includes appendices to the file format in Section 1. Section 3 of the microfiche includes the methodology of the Project TALENT 11-year follow-up study. Section 4 includes a document reporting a means of identifying potentially unreliable respondents to the student information bank. Section 5 includes the appendices to the hardcopy portion of the codebook.
description: The 1960 high school population (grades 9-12) of the United States.
description: Probability sampling was used to create this subsample of 4,000 (of the original 400,000 Project TALENT participants). It was composed of 1,000 men and women from each of the high school classes of 1960-1963, all of whom responded to the 11-year follow-up survey. The sample was selected so as to be self-weighted, i.e., the 1,000 cases for each grade were selected from all 11-year respondents for that grade with probabilities proportional to the 11-year Weight C, the weight that corrects fully for nonresponse to the 11-year follow-up survey. The original Project TALENT probability sample included 400,000 men and women drawn from over 1,000 high schools across the country (from which a representative probability sample of 375,000 was selected), as well as two special subsamples also tested in 1960: a probability sample of a complete age group (age 15) and the entire population of students in grades 8-12 in Knox County, Tennessee.