Dr. Alexander was the co-principal investigator of the longitudinal Beginning School Study (BSS), which followed the life progress of a large randomly selected sample of children who began first grade in 1982 in 20 urban Baltimore public schools. The participants were interviewed twice a year from first grade through high school completion, then again four and eight years later. Teachers were interviewed through 9th grade and most parents through 10th grade. This award will allow Alexander to finish the archival work by adding the original data collection forms. Since the original forms include participants’ verbatim replies to open-ended questions and BSS staff’s margin notes, this will help clarify ambiguities for future data analyses by other researchers.
This funding completes the archiving of the Beginning Schools Survey data archived at Harvard’s Murray Research Center, a data archive and lending library for research projects focused on youth development.
