Living in the Big Pond: Adding the Neighborhood as a Frame of Reference for Academic Self-Concept Formation

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Dominik Becker, Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Bonn; Moritz Fleischmann, Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen; Katarina Wessling, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Maastricht University; Benjamin Nagengast, Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen; Ulrich Trautwein, Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Analysis_Files_Living_in_the_Big_Pond.zip application/zip 389.7 KB 06/05/2024 04:20:AM

Project Citation: 

Becker, Dominik, Fleischmann, Moritz, Wessling, Katarina, Nagengast, Benjamin, and Trautwein, Ulrich. Living in the Big Pond: Adding the Neighborhood as a Frame of Reference for Academic Self-Concept Formation. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-06-05. https://doi.org/10.3886/E204481V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary
This data deposit contains all analysis files that are needed to replicate the empirical results of the manuscript entitled, "Living in the Big Pond: Adding the Neighborhood as a Frame of Reference for Academic Self-Concept Formation".

Analysis files comprise a master .R-script that executes further lower-order .R-scripts (separately for each of the two waves of our analysis data). From the lower-order .R-scripts, various three-level multilevel models are run via Mplus. This is done by calling the mplus-automation package (which must be installed in advance) from R.

Underlying data is the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; Blossfeld et al., 2011), Starting Cohort 3 (SC3). NEPS is a longitudinal multi-cohort study that includes information on individual students (e.g., academic self-concept, standardized achievement, socioeconomic background), learning environments (i.e., class identifiers that enable us to build reliable achievement aggregates), and neighborhood conditions (e.g., social status, income, employment). This study established a representative sample of children attending fifth grade in Germany in the school year of 2010/11. SC3 is based on a multistage sampling procedure that sampled schools as the first step and selected all students from two classes of each school in the second step.

Within the NEPS framework, neighborhood characteristics are provided by the commercial company microm consumer marketing (Schönberger & Koberg, 2017). We used neighborhood characteristics on the 8-digit postal code (PLZ8) level, thus being able to use more fine-grained neighborhood-level information than the 5-digit (PLZ5) level which is common in Germany. The PLZ8 system divides geographical space into neighborhoods comprising on average 500 households.

We used both wave 1 of NEPS-SC3 obtained between 2010/11 (5th-Grade students) and wave 5 obtained between 2014/15 (9th-Grade students). Our analyses relied on release 9.0.0 of NEPS-SC3 (doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC3:9.0.0).

As the fine-grained neighborhood-level information could be used to identify single students, parents, or teachers within specific neighborhoods, NEPS data enriched by neighborhood information can only be analysed on-site at the data hosting instition:

Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
Wilhelmsplatz 3
96047 Bamberg
Germany

Readers who are interested to replicate our findings need to get in touch with the
Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories in order to

a) sign a data usage agreement for on-site analyses,
b) participate in a data usage training, and finally
c) set up an appointment to gain on-site access to the original data.

It will be necessary to adjust the paths linking to the original data in our .R-files to the user's specific needs. 

For further information please consult the ReadMe.txt file in our analysis files ZIP folder entiteld, "Analysis_Files_Living_in_the_Big_Pond.zip".

Funding information: The NEPS was launched in 2009 and funded as a research project by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Since 2014, the NEPS has been continued at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories. Only five years after its founding, the NEPS has thus been transformed from a temporary research project into an infrastructural institution with permanent funding within the framework of federal and state funding.


Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms self concept; Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect; classroom composition; neighborhood effects; secondary education
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage Germany
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 9/2010 – 3/2015
Universe:  View help for Universe The target population of the Starting Cohort 3 includes students of the 5th grade in German schools, which offered lower secondary education in the school year 2010/11 (see https://www.neps-data.de/Portals/0/NEPS/Datenzentrum/Forschungsdaten/SC3/13-0-0/SC3_13-0-0_DataManua...).

Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) aggregate data; survey data

Methodology

Response Rate:  View help for Response Rate See "Sampling" or https://www.neps-data.de/Portals/0/NEPS/Datenzentrum/Forschungsdaten/SC3/13-0-0/SC3_13-0-0_DataManua...

Sampling:  View help for Sampling

The drawing of the initial sample took place in a stratified two‐stage procedure, in which first schools and then classes within the schools were drawn at random. For the NEPS starting cohorts 3 and 4, school sampling was carried out in one common step, i.e., schools were drawn for the surveys in grades 5 and 9 at the same time.

On the first stage, a complete list of all regular schools in Germany as primary sampling units (PSU) formed the basis for the selection. This list contained only schools of the general educa‐ tion system (e. g., no vocational schools). It was compiled with the help of up‐to‐date school directories for the school year 2008/2009, as they were available to the Statistical Offices of all 16 federal states. In order to adequately reflect the diversity of the German federal state‐ specific school systems, all schools on the list were classified according to their type and the classification used as one out of four characteristics for implicit stratification:
  •  school type (Gymnasien, Realschulen, Hauptschulen, Schulen mit mehreren Bildungsgängen, Gesamtschulen, Grundschulen, Förderschulen)
  • federal state
  • regional classification 
  • sponsorship (public vs private)
From the total list of 11,792 schools (excluding special‐needs schools), 240 original schools were selected for grade 5. 214 of these 240 schools were also included in the initial sample for the 9th grade survey of Starting Cohort 4. In addition, four substitute schools were drawn for each selected school – with identical characteristics with regard to the federal state, sponsorship, regional classification and school type as well as similar class sizes. The school sample was supplemented by 65 special‐needs schools with a focus on “learning” selected from the list and three substitute schools each. All drawn special‐needs schools overlap with the sample of Starting Cohort 4.

The participation in the study was voluntary for the selected schools as well as for the students. Despite the support of the Ministries of Education of the federal states, the recruitment of the schools proved to be a particular challenge. If an original school refused to take part in the NEPS, the loss was compensated by taking into account one of the substitute schools drawn in addition to this school.

On the second stage, two fifth classes were drawn at random in each participating school. In these two classes, all students as secondary sampling units (SSU) were asked to take part in the panel study. Prior to this selection step, the recruited schools were contacted by the survey institute and asked for information on all classes in grade 5, including the number of students per class. If there were more than two classes in a school, the two classes were selected by a “systematic random start interval sampling” procedure. If there was only one fifth class in a school, only that class was selected. In the special‐needs schools, a simple random sampling was carried out, i.e., all fifth‐graders of the participating schools were asked to participate.

In order to be part of the study, parents had to give their written consent.Only children for whom a fully completed consent form was available on the day of the survey were allowed to take part. The individual forms were distributed to the students via the schools and col‐ lected again there. Of the total of 9,622 reported students in the selected fifth classes at regular schools (gross sample), altogether 5,283 students were willing to participate in the NEPS study. These children were in possession of the mandatory declarations of consent from their parents. 4,989 out of these 5,283 target persons took the tests in the first survey wave and/or completed the questionnaire. This corresponds to a participation rate of 94.4 percent. From the selected special‐needs schools, a total of 1,064 students were reported. Parental consent was obtained for 587 students, and 566 students finally took part in the survey. Accordingly, the participation rate for this subsample is 97.1 percent. In sum, the first wave of the fifth‐grade sample contains information of 5,774 students from 291 school.

In some federal states, namely Berlin and Brandenburg, the transition to lower secondary edu‐ cation takes place after grade 6. Accordingly, when students change schools after completing grade 6, they also leave the institutional context in which they were originally sampled and in‐ terviewed or tested. Against this background, a refreshment sample of seventh‐graders was established in the course of the third survey wave in order to compensate for this loss of stu‐ dents in their institutional context.

The drawing of the refreshment sample was largely analogous to the drawing of the main sam‐ ple of regular schools. Only schools that had not yet been included in the first draw for the starting cohorts 3 or 4 were eligible for the refreshment. Again, a two‐stage sampling design with explicit and implicit stratification was applied. The two explicit strata reflect the different timings of the transition to lower secondary education. One stratum includes all regular schools in Berlin and Brandenburg, which have at least one grade 7, but do not offer grades 5 and 6. The second stratum contains all regular schools of the other 14 federal states with at least one grade 7. Within these two strata, altogether 100 original schools (and about 400 substitute schools) were systematically selected using probability proportional to size sampling. In the re‐ freshment sample, 86 out of 374 contacted schools decided to participate in the study. On the second stage, two classes were randomly selected within these schools. If there were less than three seventh classes in a school, all classes of this grade were selected. All students from the selected classes were invited to participate.

A total of 3,944 seventh‐graders were reported by the participating schools (gross sample). Of these, 2,205 were willing to take part in the NEPS study, i.e., they provided valid declarations of consent from their parents. In the end, altogether 2,146 children from the refreshment sample were surveyed in the third wave of Starting Cohort 3, i.e., their first measurement.The sampling design and its consequences for the derivation of sampling weights are fully de‐ scribed in Steinhauer and Zinn, 2016a. Further remarks on the recruiting process are given in the PAPI field report of the first survey wave in regular as well as in special‐needs schools (in German only).
Data Source:  View help for Data Source http://dx.doi.org/10.5157/NEPS:SC3:9.0.0

Collection Mode(s):  View help for Collection Mode(s) cognitive assessment test; computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI); paper and pencil interview (PAPI)
Scales:  View help for Scales
Unit(s) of Observation:  View help for Unit(s) of Observation 3,277 students, 597 classes, 247 schools, 2,314 neighborhoods
Geographic Unit:  View help for Geographic Unit German PLZ8-level (8-digit postal code)

Related Publications

Download this project

Published Versions

V1 [2024-06-05]

Export Metadata

Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

Report a Problem

Found a serious problem with the data, such as disclosure risk or copyrighted content? Let us know.

This material is distributed exactly as it arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.