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Unit of Analysis
| Individual |
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Universe
| Australian secondary school students who turned 15 in 2015 and participated in the OECD PISA. |
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Time Method
| Longitudinal/panel/cohort study |
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Sampling Procedure
| In 2015, a nationally representative sample of 15-year-old students was selected to participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment conducted by OECD; 14 530 students were selected. The initial LSAY survey wave (wave 1) for 2015 was integrated with PISA, and this group of young people became the sixth LSAY cohort. The 2015 PISA sample comprised 758 schools from all states and territories. This sample was designed to be representative of students across Australia, using state/territory, school sector, geographic location, gender and socioeconomic background as strata. Within each school, 20 students were sampled; 30 students were sampled from ACT schools; 27 students were sampled from NT schools; and all age-eligible Indigenous students were sampled. In schools with fewer than the required number of students, all 15-year-olds were selected. These students were contacted in 2016 to undertake follow-up telephone and online interviews as part of the LSAY program.
Response rates for the 2016 interviews were lower than expected due to a high rate of missing or unusable contact details provided at the time of PISA. To address this, recruitment of a top-up sample of Year 12 students was conducted in 2017 to ensure that future waves of the survey remain representative of the 15-year-old population in 2015.
Further information is available from the LSAY 2015 cohort user guide. |
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Collection Mode
| Wave 1: self-completion questionnaire
From wave 2: telephone interviews + online option
Wave 3 top-up sample: paper-based via mail |
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Type of Research Instrument
| Structured |
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Characteristics of Data Collection Situation
| Data are initially collected through a combination of school achievement tests and a questionnaire administered at school as part of PISA. From wave 2, data are gathered using annual telephone interviews with the option to complete the interview online.
An additional short paper-based recruitment questionnaire was also administered to Year 12 students in school as part of the wave 3 top-up activity. |
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Actions to Minimize Losses
| Sample members were provided with an LSAY brochure and their parents were provided with a letter about the program as part of the PISA materials sent to participants. Following the PISA assessment, an LSAY flyer was provided alongside their PISA materials encouraging them to provide or update their contact details. Students providing their contact details during or after their PISA assessment were entered into a prize draw. Sample members are sent a self-mailer letter prior to the start of the fieldwork to reinforce their involvement and advise them of their forthcoming interview. At this time, sample members are also asked to update their contact details. Email invitations are also sent to respondents and reminder emails and SMS are provided throughout the survey period. Towards the end of the fieldwork period, a self-mailer letter and email is sent to thank participants for their involvement in LSAY and as a reminder for those who have not yet completed their survey. Respondents completing the survey are also eligible for the prize draw. Sample members can choose to do the survey using Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) and/or Computer-Assisted Web Interviews (CAWI). All interviewers and supervisors participate in a three-hour briefing to review the interviewing skills required and to ensure they have a clear understanding of the project’s requirements and background. Interviewing is compliant with the ISO 20252 standard. For wave 3, two approaches were taken to increase the overall sample size: wave 2 non-responders were re-engaged using incentives, and an additional top-up sample was recruited by drawing a new random sample of school students the same age as the main cohort, with the goal of collecting a short recruitment questionnaire and integrating these participants into the main sample at waves 3 or 4. Incentives worth $20 were provided to wave 2 non-responders as well as members of the top-up sample. To test the effectiveness of various incentivising approaches, half of the sample were offered an incentive after completing the recruitment questionnaire and the other half were offered an incentive after completing the wave 3 questionnaire. Not all participants were provided with an incentive. As a result of the success of the re-engagement of previous non-responders at wave 3, this approach was retained at wave 4. In addition, those who had participated in the previous year’s top-up activity were also approached to complete an interview. To increase the likelihood of a completed interview, certain respondent types were incentivised. Sample members were provided with an LSAY brochure and their parents were provided with a letter about the program as part of the PISA materials sent to participants. Following the PISA assessment, an LSAY flyer was provided, alongside their PISA materials, encouraging them to provide or update their contact details. Students providing their contact details during or after their PISA assessment were entered into a prize draw. Sample members are sent a self-mailer letter prior to the start of the fieldwork to reinforce their involvement and advise them of their forthcoming interview. At this time, sample members are also asked to update their contact details. Email invitations are also sent to respondents and reminder emails and SMS are provided throughout the survey period. Towards the end of the fieldwork period, a self-mailer letter and email is sent to thank participants for their involvement in LSAY and as a reminder for those who have not yet completed their survey. Respondents completing the survey are also eligible for the prize draw. Sample members can choose to do the survey using Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) and/or Computer-Assisted Web Interviews (CAWI). All interviewers and supervisors participate in a three-hour briefing to review the interviewing skills required and to ensure they have a clear understanding of the project’s requirements and background. Interviewing is compliant with the ISO 20252 standard. For wave 3, two approaches were taken to increase the overall sample size: wave 2 non-responders were re-engaged using incentives, and an additional top-up sample was recruited by drawing a new random sample of school students the same age as the main cohort, with the goal of collecting a short recruitment questionnaire and integrating these participants into the main sample at waves 3 or 4. Incentives worth $20 were provided to wave 2 non-responders as well as members of the top-up sample. To test the effectiveness of various incentivising approaches, half of the sample were offered an incentive after completing the recruitment questionnaire and the other half were offered an incentive after completing the wave 3 questionnaire. Not all participants were provided with an incentive. As a result of the success of the re-engagement of previous non-responders at wave 3, this approach was retained at wave 4. In addition, those who had participated in the previous year’s top-up activity were also approached to complete an interview. To increase the likelihood of a completed interview, certain respondent types were incentivised. Incentives were again provided to selected groups at wave 5. All respondents, regardless of the group they were in, were eligible to go into the draw to win 1 of 50 $100 Coles Myer Gift Cards. An additional incentive of a $20 eGift card was provided to the groups most at risk of not participating. From wave 6, incentives of a $20 eGift card were provided to encourage early survey completion, and a rolling prize draw approach was introduced. There were three prize draws each worth $2,000 with a total prize pool of $6,000. For each of the three prize draws, the prizes were one of: 1 x $500 pre; or 4 x $250; or 5 x $100 pre-paid Eftpos gift cards. Further information is available from the LSAY 2015 cohort user guide. http://www.lsay.edu.au/publications/lsay-2015-cohort-user-guide/ |
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Weighting
| All LSAY data can be weighted to compensate for non-random attrition from the sample and adjust for clustering effects in the original sample designs.
Further information is available from:
> LSAY 2015 cohort user guide
> Weighting the LSAY PISA cohorts
> PISA 2015 country report (Australia)
> PISA 2015 technical report |
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Cleaning Operations
| Random checks were conducted on the data by the archive for missing variables and value labels, out of range values and wild codes, logical inconsistencies and confidentiality. If any errors or problems with the data are found, please contact |
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Response Rate
| The 2015 cohort surveyed 14,530 young people who turned 15 in 2015.
Further information is available from:
> LSAY 2015 cohort user guide
> LSAY QuickStats |
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Notes
| Version information:
Version 1.0: Initial release of waves 1 and 2 data.
Version 2.0: Release of wave 3 (2017) data. Minor corrections to derived variables XCEL2016, XVET2016, XBAC2016, XFTS2016, X1222016, X1232016, XHEL2016, XATR2016, and XUNE2016.
Version 3.0: Release of wave 4 (2018) data. Corrections to derived variables XCEL2017, XVET2017, XFTS2017, X1222017, X1232017, XHEL2017 and XATR2017. Adjustments to 2016 and 2017 weights. Study specific school identifiers created in place of ACARA school identifiers to facilitate linkage with the linked LSAY-ACARA My School datasets.
Version 4.0: Release of wave 5 (2019) data. Corrections to assignment of anonymised ACARA school ID and school state. Modifications to ‘in survey’ flags and/or derived variable assignments for: respondents from the top-up group; respondents who undertook a VET qualification while at school; and respondents who were unemployed or not in the labour force.
Version 5.0: Release of wave 6 (2020) data. Corrections to derived variables XCEL2019, XFTS2019, XBAC2019, XVET2019, XFTE2019. Change to derivation of XMAR2018, XMAR2019. Corrections to variables LDDL001C- LDDL001H, LDDL002A-H, LEDL001A-H, LEDL002A-E, LBCA010A- LBCA010F, LBCA010H-LBCA010J.
• Version 6.0: Release of wave 6 (2021) data.
• Version 7.0: Release of wave 7 (2022) data.
For further details, please refer to the appendix of the LSAY 2015 cohort user guide. |
