Your assignment is to re-analyze data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1998 and to write a brief research report sharing your results. The specific question to be answered is:

Are Catholic or other private schools more effective than public schools in promoting mathematics achievement in grade 10? The results will be relevant to policy debates about whether parents should have more choice in selecting schools. If Catholic or other private schools are more effective than public schools, some would argue that all children should have access to those schools. For example, the government could issue vouchers and parents could choose to use those vouchers to select the school of their choice, be it public, Catholic, or other private .

Please write a brief research report that:

1. provides a brief introduction that gives a rationale for your work, states the question, and defines the causal and outcome variables (no literature review is needed or expected);
2. provides a "naļve" estimate of the impact of "school type" (Catholic or other private versus public);
3. identifies all confounding variables and cites the statistical evidence you used in making this identification;
4. compares the outcomes of the three school types in an analysis that adjusts for all confounding variables (in doing so, write out the population model, indicate key assumptions; and give the estimates and standard errors for each parameter in the model).
5. checks key model assumptions;
6. includes a concluding paragraph that summarizes your results, indicating how convinced you are about the validity of your estimates of effectiveness.

The data set for this analysis is called "nelskeepsmall.sav." The variable labels and values of each variable should be self-explanatory but don’t hesitate to ask in class or lab if you have questions.

Please present the report in the form of a brief essay. Do not list the 6 items above, but rather weave the answers into a coherent account of what you did, why you did it, and what you found. One way to write the essay is in the standard format of "Questions, Methods, Results, Discussion." However, you are free to create any structure that clearly and succinctly communicates your ideas.

You may work in groups if you wish to compare results and debate the merits of alternative conclusions. However, each member of the class must write up the results independently. This writing is great practice in becoming a researcher.

Price: $39.87

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 20 pages, 1987 words and 13 charts.
Deliverable: Word Document