The National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72) was a comprehensive study conducted to track the educational, vocational, and personal development of high school seniors who graduated in 1972. NLS-72 was implemented by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the U.S. Department of Education. It is the first in an ongoing series of longitudinal studies designed to offer policymakers and researchers data related to high school educational experiences in the United States. NLS–72's design is a nationally representative, random sample of the three million American high school seniors enrolled in the spring of 1972. Students answered questions about their personal and family background, education and work experiences, plans for the future, attitudes, and opinions. School administrators and counsellors provided additional information about students and schools.
Historical context The idea for national longitudinal surveys of high school students emerged during a period of rapid change in American society. The Baby Boom (1945–1965) led to a surge in public school enrollment, coinciding with desegregation following Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The Cold War and the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik fueled public anxiety over the perceived technological and educational gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, prompting the federal government to take on a greater role in providing high-quality education to American schoolchildren. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society policies, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, sought to increase federal funding and evaluation of public schools. Social scientists were enlisted by the Department of Education to apply quantitative methods, a practice known as systems analysis, to guide policy making. This approach laid the foundation for evidence-based practices in policy analysis. Systems analysis allowed policymakers to collect, compare, and analyze educational data, such as teacher retention and graduation rates, to inform decisions. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the first national assessment and report on the American school system, was introduced in 1964. This annual report provided aggregated snapshots of the U.S. education system and is still in use today. While valuable, the NAEP's static nature limited its ability to track changes over time and explore cause-and-effect relationships. Researchers advocated for longitudinal studies, which aimed to fill this gap.
Development and purpose The National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72) was conceived in the early 1960s, during the height of systems analysis. Its goal was to understand the educational development of students and the factors influencing their education and career outcomes. Researchers sought data on school quality, course patterns, attendance, ambition, and post-graduation outcomes, including higher education, the workforce, and family life. Special attention was given to postsecondary trends, particularly in the context of the Civil Rights and Second-Wave Feminism movements, which saw increased attendance among women and students of color in higher education. The study also aimed to explore factors affecting postsecondary choices, including cost, access, and persistence.
Study design
Base year surveys Base-year data for NLS-72 was collected in Spring 1972, prior to high school graduation. Students were selected using a stratified, two-stage probability sample, in which schools were selected first, and in the second stage, seniors were randomly chosen from each school. The stratified, random sample originally included 1,200 schools from strata defined by characteristics like geographic region, school type, enrollment size, proximity to higher education institutions, racial and ethnic composition, community income, and urbanization level. Schools in low-income areas and those with high numbers of Black, Hispanic, and other racial minority students were sampled at twice the rate of other schools. These groups were oversampled because while they made up a smaller amount of the population, adequate data on their experiences was needed to study and address racial opportunity gaps. Within each school, eighteen senior students were randomly selected. Students who had dropped out, graduated early, or were in adult education classes were omitted. Initial instruments included a Student Questionnaire, a Student Record Information Form (SRIF), a School Questionnaire, and a Counselor Questionnaire. The Student Questionnaire gathered information on personal and family backgrounds, education and work experiences, plans for the future, as well as attitudes, aspirations, and opinions. The questionnaire also included a cognitive test battery. At the conclusion of the base-year survey, only 1,040 schools from the original sample, along with 26 backup schools, participated. At this point, several strata had no participating schools, and many only had one. To mitigate the effects of school nonresponse, a resurvey was conducted in the summer of 1973, prior to the first follow-up survey. The final NLS-72 sample comprised 23,450 former 1972 high school seniors and 1,340 schools.
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