NAEP Process Data Researchers Ruhan Circi and Burhan Ogut recently published an article in the National Council on Measurement in Education’s journal Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) to explore the relationship between high school coursetaking and college enrollment.

The article, “Diving Into Students’ Transcripts: High School Course-Taking Sequences and Postsecondary Enrollment,” describes how the researchers used sequence analysis and clustering to identify common coursetaking patterns in a range of subjects and examine representative coursetaking sequences. Multiple analysis techniques are employed to investigate the relationship between these sequences and postsecondary outcomes like enrollment. The researchers found that all students and student subgroups had distinct and identifiable representative coursetaking sequences and that postsecondary enrollment was associated with the more complex and advanced sequences. Check out the article to get a closer look at educational data analysis from NAEP experts.

Ogut and Circi are working on replicating some of their analyses using the NAEP High School Transcript Study (HSTS); they plan to disseminate these analyses as well once the HSTS restricted-use data are released. The HSTS is a periodic survey of U.S. high school curricula and coursetaking patterns, providing an in-depth look at earned credits, grade point averages, and the relationship between graduates’ achievement and coursetaking. You can learn more about the HSTS and look at the most recent data on the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) website here.

If you’re interested in HSTS research and analysis, you could have the chance to learn more directly from these NAEP experts and their colleagues by participating in the NAEP HSTS Data Training Workshop. Researchers who participate are introduced to HSTS by the experts, guided in data analysis strategies, and offered hands-on practice with HSTS data files. You can learn more about the NAEP HSTS Data Training here and sign up for our mailing list here to stay up to date on when applications will next be open.