These research files contain results from the administrations of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Smarter Balanced Assessments and contain the same information presented in the Detailed Test Results section of this site. These files are provided to allow for more complex analyses and customized reporting of the data.
To protect student confidentiality, no scores are reported (or included in the research files) for any group with fewer than 11 students.
PLEASE NOTE:
Use of these research files requires some expertise in the handling of data and advanced data management skills. Many of the district and county research files are very large (up to 130MB) and may be too large for spreadsheet applications. Database applications such as MS Access, SAS, or SPSS are required to manage these files. The file size is indicated in parentheses and is shown only when the size is greater than one megabyte. Because of the size of the California Statewide Research File for all student groups, both the fixed-width and caret-delimited versions will now have three sets of files: one set for the combined file with both ELA and mathematics, one set for ELA only, and one for mathematics only. When loading the Microsoft Access database, the combined file cannot be used because of its size. Instead, load the ELA file into the Microsoft Access database and load mathematics separately into a second Microsoft Access database.
How to Import a Research File into Microsoft Excel (PDF; 1MB)
Select a county or a county and district to search and download research files.
The following entity files list the county, district, and school entity names and codes for all entities as they existed in the administration year selected. This file must be merged with the research file to join these entity names with the appropriate score data.
A database shell is another alternative provided at this site. Once downloaded to the target computer, this application provides a powerful school, district, county, ccounty-ddistrict-sschool (CDS) code, and ZIP code search capability as well as a formatted report containing all the data for the selected entity. This MS Access 2007 shell contains all entity data and is designed to import any of the selected state, county, or district caret-delimited or comma-delimited files. To use the shell, MS Access 2007 must already be installed on your computer.
Achieving accurate results when working with these research files requires an understanding of the structure and content of the two primary tables: the entities table and the test data table. The research files have many rows for each entity. There are records for each combination of grades, tests, and student groups. This means that there are hundreds to thousands of records for each entity, with an average of approximately 900 records. To correctly work with the data, you must use constraints to limit the data you are reporting. These constraints are discussed next.
This table is composed of the state, all counties, districts, and schools in California. Because there are both school-level and district summary records as well as county and state summary records, it is critical that in any analysis, a "Type ID" record type be selected. This will help avoid the double or triple-counting that will occur when a school count is also counted in the associated district record.
This table is composed of the school, district, county, and state aggregate CAASPP counts and scores. To accurately analyze and report from these research files, the appropriate constraints must be applied to the following elements:
Providing accurate and meaningful reports from the research files generally requires the linking of the Entities and Test Data tables. Additional efforts might include linking to the lookup tables. Working with these tables requires an understanding of relational data tables and their manipulation.
