University Library News
Georgia State University

National Center for Education Statistics announces new survey data website

DataLab, a new website from the Institute of Education Sciences’ National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), puts a wide range of survey data collected by NCES at your fingertips. Whether you want a quick number or an in-depth look at education data, the tools in the DataLab are designed to do both.

QuickStats, available now at the same site, is a guided table generator that allows users to produce a table with ease. Designed for those who are new to NCES data, or those who wish to answer basic questions — what percent of college students are from low-income families? what percent of adults are taking coursework outside of the traditional college setting? what are the teaching challenges most often cited by public school teachers? — QuickStats provides easy access to frequently used variables in many NCES studies of students, teachers, schools, and postsecondary institutions.

PowerStats, available in the spring of 2009, will permit users to produce complex tables and to run regressions, and to draw upon thousands of variables from many NCES studies. Like its predecessor the NCES DAS, Powerstats will allow for many kinds of regression analyses, including weighted least squares and logistic regression. (NCES)