High School and Beyond (HS&B) is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of people who were high school sophomores and seniors in 1980. The study was originally funded by the United States Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as a part of their Secondary Longitudinal Studies Program. NORC at the University of Chicago, then known as the National Opinion Research Center, developed the sample design and performed the data collection for the study. The study surveyed students from over 1,000 public and private high schools on their cognitive and non-cognitive skills, high school experiences, work experiences, and future plans. Baseline surveys were administered in 1980, with follow-up surveys in 1982, 1984, 1986, 1992 (sophomores), 2014 (sophomores), and 2015 (seniors).
An additional follow-up study entered the field in 2021. Researchers at the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University are working in collaboration with NORC to continue the project (with the endorsement of NCES). In 2019, the National Institute on Aging (Grant R01 AG058719) and the Alzheimer’s Association (Grant SG-20-717567) awarded grants to re-contact the members of the original 1980 sophomore and senior classes.
The origins/historical context
The HS&B was designed and collected with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as part of their National Education Longitudinal Studies program to document the “educational, vocational, and personal development of young people… following them over time as they begin to take on adult roles and responsibilities”. NORC at the University of Chicago collected the surveys. Noted sociologist James Samuel Coleman led the design team for the initial study. James S. Coleman’s work has had “a far-reaching impact on government education policy”. In his writings on Coleman, Peter Marsden notes that “Coleman made influential contributions that range across the sociology of education, policy research, mathematical sociology, network/structural analysis, and sociological theory” and “ranks among the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century.”
HS&B respondents occupy an important position at the end of the Baby Boom. They are the first post-Civil Rights cohort; they are the first cohort in which women's educational attainments exceeded those of men; they are the first in recent history in which it was normative for women to experience uninterrupted labor force participation; and they are among the first cohorts to confront the insecurity and loss of the generous pensions and affordable health insurance they experienced and expected when they began their careers. The HS&B cohort is more racially and ethnically diverse than earlier contemporary cohorts, in part because it was the first to come of age after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart-Cellar Act).
Study design
Base year surveys
HS&B began in 1980 as a nationally representative sample of 30,030 sophomores and 28,240 seniors in 1,015 public and private high schools in the United States. From the initial sample of 58,270 public and private high school students, 14,825 sophomores and 11,995 seniors were selected to be re-interviewed over their early adult years. Each school contained a representative sample of 36 sophomores and 36 seniors, making possible inferences about each school and its student body. The student questionnaires in 1980 gathered important information about educational experiences, cognitive skills (measured by standardized multiple-choice assessments of reading, math, science and social studies achievement) and non-cognitive skills (e.g., self-esteem, self-efficacy, emotional distress, social activities, academic effort, reports from four teachers about the students’ educational, behavioral, and social characteristics), as well as peers, employment activities, educational and occupational plans and aspirations, and family background (e.g., parental education, family composition, siblings, parenting practices and parents’ educational and occupational expectations for their children).