Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1966, the Equality of Educational Opportunity Study (EEOS) is a landmark social survey used for national policy-making. It includes test scores and questionnaire responses from a national sample of first-, third-, sixth-, ninth-, and twelfth-grade students, as well as their teachers and principals. The data captures student demographics, socioeconomic background, attitudes, and performance on standardized tests of verbal skills, reading, and mathematics.
Use Cases
- Analyzing the relationship between student socioeconomic background and standardized test scores based on the described student data.
- Modeling the influence of teacher experience and attitudes on student performance based on the teacher questionnaire responses.
- Investigating racial and ethnic disparities in educational opportunity and achievement based on the study's core mandate and collected racial attitude data.
- Studying the alignment between student education/career goals and academic achievement based on the described student questionnaire items.
Strengths
- Data was collected from a national sample of U.S. schools, providing a broad geographic scope.
- Includes multi-perspective data from students, teachers, and principals, allowing for cross-sectional analysis.
- Covers five distinct grade levels (first, third, sixth, ninth, twelfth), enabling longitudinal-style cohort comparisons.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified as the data is historical.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
Provenance
- Source
- James S. Coleman at Johns Hopkins University, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
- Collection Method
- Social survey comprising teacher-administered standardized tests and questionnaires.
- Time Range
- 1966
- Geography
- United States (national sample of schools)