DOI: 10.6077/ej30-kv55
title: National Longitudinal Transition Study of Special Education Students, 1987-1991

description: &lt;p&gt;In 1983, the U.S. Congress mandated a national study of special education students' experiences with transition out of school and into adult life. The study was conducted to provide practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and other special education affiliates with information that describes the transition that disabled youth make from secondary school to early adulthood. It was further to identify factors that contribute to youths' effective transition from secondary school to employment, further training or education, and independent living. The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) of the U.S. Department of Education contracted with SRI International to develop a research design, craft and field test data collection instruments, and select a sample of students for a study that would meet the congressional mandate. In April 1987, under a separate contract, SRI began data collection for The National Longitudinal Transition Study of Special Education Students, 1987-1991 (NLTS). The sample for the NLTS involves more than 8,000 youth aged 13 or older and in grade seven or higher. This sample represents the national population of secondary special education students in the 1985-86 school year. Furthermore, the sample was drawn so that findings generalize to students in secondary special education in 1985-1986, both as a whole and separately for students in each of the 11 federal special education disability categories. Data were first gathered in 1987 (referred to as Wave 1) and again in 1990-91 (referred to as Wave 2). Therefore, youths' patterns of experiences through secondary school and into their early adult years could be charted over time. In 1989, additional data were collected in two &quot;substudies&quot; for particular sets of youth within the primary sample. The &quot;school program&quot; substudy was undertaken to examine in greater detail the experiences of youth during their entire secondary school career. To examine the experiences of youth in their first few years after secondary school, the &quot;exiter&quot; substudy consisted of telephone interviews regarding more than 800 youth. These youth were already out of secondary school at the time of the Wave 1 interview.&lt;/p&gt;
description: collection_notes: SRI employed a multi-stage stratified random sampling design. The sample was drawn through a stratification process to assure that the universe of special education students was properly represented. A list of local education agencies (LEAs) was first constructed from a variety of sources. In 1986, the estimated universe consisted of about 13,180 LEAs. This list of school districts, education agencies, bureaus or schools was stratified by region, district size, and district or community wealth. The entire universe of LEAs could then be classified within a 96-cell table. Two stages of selection occurred at this point. A first stage sample of 1,600 was constructed in which a very high proportion of larger districts and a lower proportion of smaller districts were selected. A set of weights were developed to adjust estimates for unequal LEA (and student) selection probabilities and for nonresponse bias. About 93.6 percent of these sampled LEAs responded to an initial interview. SRI selected a second-stage sample of 450 LEAs as primary sampling units from the respondents to the first stage set of interviews. About 50 percent of these sampled LEAs consented to participate in the study. Consequently, SRI augmented this sample with further randomly selected candidate LEAs. In total, 303 LEAs participated in the NLTS.