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In the 2008 and 2004 SIPP panels, the educational attainment (EEDUCATE), GED (RGED), and educational attainment recode items (RCOLLVOC) are incorrectly coded for some respondents starting in Wave 2. An instrument design flaw led to re-asking people with less than a high school education and no GED if they had earned a GED at each wave. Educational attainment should have only been updated for respondents under age 26 or those enrolled in school at the prior wave. Although a few of these respondents may actually have earned a GED between interview waves, the magnitude of the increase in GEDs over the panel is not consistent with other data sources (including from the GED Testing Service) suggesting a large proportion of false positive responses.
This re-asking increased the count of GEDs at each subsequent wave, which led to an increase in the number of high school graduates because the instrument records GED holders as high school graduates (see Table 1 in attachment). The number of respondents who were over age 25, not enrolled at school and less than a high school graduate at the prior wave, and became high school graduates at the current wave was 3,053 across the first five waves of the 2008 Panel (see Table 2 in attachment for the unweighted attainment distribution and the count of corrected responses).
Starting at Wave 2, we use the prior wave EEDUCATE, RGED, and RCOLLVOC values for respondents who are 26 years and over, not enrolled in school, and who increase from having less than a high school education to being a high school graduate in the current wave. For the previously released 2008 data (Waves 2-5), we will release new files with corrected EEDUCATE, RGED, and RCOLLVOC values. Starting in Wave 6, the corrected values will already be included in the initial person-level data files. Corrected files will also be released for Waves 2-12 of the 2004 Panel.
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