DOI: 10.3886/icpsr33583
title: RETA: Lincoln School Staff Social Network Questionnaire Longitudinal Study, 2007-2008
title: Archival Version

description: The Lincoln School Staff Social Network Questionnaire Longitudinal Study, 2007-2008 is a part of the RETA: Distributed Leadership for Middle School Mathematics Education: Content Area Leadership Expertise in Practice study. The goal of RETA was to design and validate a series of research instruments to identify leadership for mathematics instruction in middle schools and for documenting instructional leadership practice. Adopting a distributed perspective on leadership, this work focused on both formally designated and informal leaders and their leadership routines. The objective was to develop valid and reliable instruments that make the day-to-day practice of school leadership for mathematics instruction more transparent, as well as measure changes in this practice over time. This project utilized Social Network Surveys, Experience Sampling Methods (ESM), and Daily Practice Logs. To validate these instruments, a combination of shadowing, end of day cognitive interviews, and semi-structured interviews was used. These instruments were used to describe and analyze when and how teachers and other educators solicit or provide instructional advice and the degree to which these resources influence their work. For the Lincoln longitudinal study, there was a partnership with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, as part of the Math in the Middle MSP. In 2007, the School Staff Social Network Survey (SSSNQ) was administered to all 10 middle schools in the Lincoln Public Schools District. In 2008, Math in the Middle was collaborated with to conduct the SSSNQ for a second administration in all 10 middle schools, which provided longitudinal data to analyze changes in formal and informal leadership for mathematics education in these schools. The SSSNQ was administered for the third time to the entire cohort of Math in the Middle Teaching Associates that have undergone training through the Math in the Middle MSP.
description: The program of research and development addresses three main goals: To describe and analyze content leadership practices for middle school mathematics instruction and generate empirical evidence concerning which of these practices enables improvement in mathematics teaching and learning.; To describe the dimensions of knowledge for content leadership in mathematics at the middle school level and design, pilot, and validate these instruments for measuring content leadership knowledge.; To generate more robust empirical evidence about whether and how content leadership knowledge can be learned through both formal learning opportunities (e.g., MSPs, Institute Partnerships) and informal on-the-job learning.;
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Standardized missing values.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Presence of Common Scales: The peer-report items are based on a measure used by the Consortium on Chicago Schools Research (CCSR) in their bi-annual surveys of Chicago schools. The 7 self-report items are selected from a 12-item measure studied in Lee and Smith's 1996 article "Collective Responsibility for Learning and Its Effects on Gains in Achievement for Early Secondary School Students."; Nine-item measure drawn from a paper by Lee, Smith, and Cioci (1993) called "Teachers and Principals: Gender-Related Perceptions of Leadership and Power in Secondary Schools."; Six-item scale to measure trust among teachers, drawn from a measure used by CCSR.; 8-item scale to measure trust between teachers and the school principal, drawn from a measure used by CCSR.; Seven-item scale to measure staff assessments of the principal's level of instructional leadership, drawn from a measure used by CCSR.; Six-item scale to measure teachers' attitude towards innovation, drawn from a measure used by CCSR.;
description: Response Rates: Responses were received from 86 percent of teaching staff, 50 percent of school principals, 60 percent of assistant principals, 90 percent of media specialists/librarians, 71 percent of program consultants/coordinators, 89 percent of school counselors, and 46 percent of other school staff. School-level response rates for teaching staff varied from 70 percent to 94 percent.
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: Winter 2007 and Spring 2008 Survey Datafile 
 DS2: Winter 2007 and Spring 2008 Network Datafile
description: RETA Distributed Leadership for Middle School Mathematics Education: Content Area Leadership Expertise in Practice Series
description: web-based survey 
The Math in the Middle Teaching Associates data is not available.
The cross sectional data files for the 2007 and 2008 study are not available due to confidentiality issues.
description: School teachers and leaders in one small urban southeastern school district. Smallest Geographic Unit: city
description: From a directory search on the Nebraska Department of Education website (http://educdirsrc.nde.state.ne.us/), data on staff names and positions for every school in the state of Nebraska was obtained, including both public and private schools. Data were downloaded on March 7, 2007, and are believed to be current as of mid-February or later. All ten middle schools in the Lincoln Public Schools system were surveyed. Also, from Math in the Middle (MITM) administrative records, the following information was obtained: Lists of all participants in MITM cohorts 1 through 3.; Lists of all applicants to MITM cohort 4, including both those that were accepted and those that were rejected.; Lists of all MITM project personnel.;