Code for Processing National Student Clearinghouse Data

Resources for Conducting Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) in Postsecondary Education

Phase 2: Implementation and Analyses

Code for Processing National Student Clearinghouse Data

The National Student Clearinghouse is one of the most frequently used and reliable data sources for measuring outcomes in higher education. It contains enrollment and degree attainment data for 97 percent of the students who are enrolled in United States postsecondary institutions. However, its data can be time-consuming to prepare for analysis.

THE-RCT’s National Student Clearinghouse Data Processing Toolkit is a GitHub repository containing open-source R code to help researchers efficiently, consistently, and transparently process National Student Clearinghouse data. The toolkit guides users through each step of this task:

  • adding institutional characteristics using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)
  • classifying enrollment and degree data and conducting quality control checks
  • creating relative (that is, the semesters relative to when a student joined a study) indicators for each record
  • generating standard student-level outcome variables

This resource also includes documentation and guidance for users on resolving common issues. Some prior experience with R is recommended.

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Key Resources

Github repository
THE-RCT’s National Student Clearinghouse Data Processing Toolkit
Helps researchers process data from the National Student Clearinghouse for analyses

Supporters

This project was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305D240057 to MDRC. The opinions that are expressed herein are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute of Education Sciences or the U.S. Department of Education.

THE-RCT Network | MDRC Staff