NCES Sample Surveys: A Practical Primer for New Users, Practitioners, and Policymakers

The resources needed to conduct high‐quality and large‐scale survey research are often beyond the reach of institutional researchers and higher education analysts. However, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides many national student surveys that researchers can utilize. We outline four NCES studies—the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, and Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study—and describe their samples and research topics that can be explored with each. Using practitioner focused case studies as examples, we then describe three ways that researchers can access and utilize these data. We also provide an appendix with code for importing data, using weights, and estimating variance in R, Stata, SAS, and SPSS.