DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37287
title: Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY), Seventh Grade Data, 1987-1988; 2015-2016
title: Archival Version

description: The Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) is a project that was originally funded by the National Science Foundation in 1985 and was designed to examine the development of: (1) student attitudes toward and achievement in science, (2) student attitudes toward and achievement in mathematics, and (3) student interest in and plans for a career in science, mathematics, or engineering, during middle school, high school, and the first four years post-high school. The relative influence parents, home, teachers, school, peers, media, and selected informal learning experiences had on these developmental patterns was considered as well.
The LSAY was designed to select and follow two cohorts of students in 1987. Cohort One was a national sample of approximately 3,000 tenth grade students in public high schools throughout the United States. Cohort Two, consisted of a national sample of 3,116 seventh grade students in public schools that served as feeder schools to the same high schools in which the older cohort was enrolled. Data collection continues for Cohorts One and Two, 31 years after the study began.
In the fall of 2015, data collection began on a third cohort: Cohort Three. Cohort Three consisted of 3,721 students in the seventh grade in public schools
throughout the United States. The data in this release provides seventh grade
comparison data across a 28-year timespan: Cohort Two (1987-1988) and Cohort
Three (2015-2016).
This study includes arts-related variables about student and parent participation in music, art, literary, dance, and theatrical pursuits. For a more details please see Description of Variables.
description: Variables include student and parent attitudes and interest in education and career choices, which math and science courses a student attends, parent-student interaction, academic encouragement and support. For Cohort 3, several variables about social media usage and online activities were added. For both cohorts, several arts-related variables are in these data including music, art, literary arts, dance, singing and theater. The following information is a summary of the arts-related content found in these data.
 Music variables include access to a musical instrument at home, how often student plays or listens to music, if they receive music lessons outside of school, if they attended a camp or course outside of school that is specific to music, if they attend symphony or other live music performances with a parent, and whether they are in band or orchestra.
Art variables include whether the student visits art museums/galleries or attends art courses or camps outside of school, time student spends doing arts or crafts, and whether the student has access to a camera at home for taking pictures.
Literary arts content includes whether the student participated in the school newspaper or literary magazine, has written a poem/story/blog, etc., won a writing award, if their parents read a lot, how much non-homework reading the student does, and if they have many books in their home.
Dance, singing, and theater content includes whether the student attends dance lessons outside of school, whether the student is in choir, and whether the student attends or watches plays, movies, or acting classes or performs in theater productions.
description: A weight variable - WEIGHT7 - has been calculated for all of the participants from Cohorts Two and Three. Correct estimates of national distributions can only be obtained by
using WEIGHT7 for the analysis at hand. The approach taken in weighting observations in the LSAY was to calculate "relative" weights for each student, where the sum of the students' relative weights equals the student
sample size. To obtain these weights, each student's selection probability was calculated, and then adjusted that probability to reflect the realized sample size. The LSAY stratification (region-by-urbanicity) of schools, PPS selection of schools, and random draw of students within schools means that the sampled students must be described at three levels: their sample stratum, their school, and the sample within their school.
description: Response Rates: A total of 3,116 participants completed the Cohort Two fall questionnaire in 1987. In the spring of 1988,
2,873 (92.2 percent) of the original participants completed the second questionnaire. In the fall of 2015, 3,721
Cohort Three participants completed the first questionnaire. In the spring of 2016, 3,125 Cohort Three
participants (84.0 percent) completed the second seventh-grade questionnaire. One parent of 79.7 percent of Cohort
Two parents and 41.1 percent of Cohort Three parents completed a parent questionnaire in the spring.
description: The sampling schemes for both the original study (Cohorts One and Two) and the new seventh grade cohort were two-stage stratified probability samples. In each study the United States was stratified by four geographic regions (north, Midwest, south, and west) and three levels of urban development (central city, suburban, and non-metropolitan). The proportion of students represented by each stratum (tenth grade students in 1987 and seventh grade students in 2015) was calculated, and schools were selected from each stratum based on that proportion. Once cooperation was reached with a school to participate, students were randomly selected from the school based on lists of students provided by the schools.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY), Seventh Grade Data, 1987-1988; 2015-2016
description: Seventh grade students in public schools in the United States in the 1987-1988 school year and their parents, and seventh grade students in the United States in the 2014-2015 school year and their parents. Smallest Geographic Unit: Region
description: on-site questionnaire; telephone interview; web-based surveyThis data is related to ICPSR 30263, but should not replace the previous data. This data deposit includes only seventh grade data from one of the original LSAY cohorts (Cohort Two) collected during the 1987-88 school year, as well as data from a new seventh grade cohort (Cohort Three) collected during the 2015-16 school year.For further information about LSAY see the Longitudinal Study of American Youth website.