UT Dallas > Texas Schools Project > Education Research Center > Data Documentation

Data Documentation

This page contains documentation for the UT Dallas Education Research Center, Texas Education Agency and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board data. To learn more about the data, please review the documents below. As you click on the relevant documents, they will open in a separate window.

UT Dallas ERC Documentation

Texas Education Agency (TEA)

Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) Data Documentation

Testing Data Documentation

State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR)

Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS)

Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS)

Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS)

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB)

Texas Public Universities Documentation

Texas Health-Related Institutions Documentation

Texas Community, Technical, and State Colleges Documentation

Texas Independent Colleges & Universities Documentation

Financial Aid Database Documentation

Appendices for THECB Manuals

Documentation summarizing differences in the manuals related to Texas Public Universities, Texas Community, Technical, State Colleges and Texas Health-Related Institutions can be found in:

UT Dallas ERC Synthetic Data

Our synthetic data files contain artificially generated values that mimic the structure of our ERC data files.

If you are interested in using our synthetic data, please send a request and a half-page abstract of your proposed project to the TSP leadership team. Please note that it is expected that researchers provided access to the synthetic data will submit a proposal to the ERC Advisory Board to conduct their project at the UTD-ERC should their project prove feasible. 

Objectives of the Synthetic Data

  • Help potential researchers understand the structure of the data.
  • Prepare the analytical programs in advance.

Description of the Synthetic Data

  • All the observations in the real data have been truncated completely before generating synthetic data.
  • The synthetic data is generated based on our current data holdings.
  • The directory tree structure for the synthetic data is same as the real data.
  • All the synthetic data files are STATA data format.
  • Number of observations:
    • If number of observation is greater than or equal to 1000, then in synthetic data, the number of observations will be 1% of real data.
    • If number of observation is less than 1,000 and greater than or equal to 10, then in synthetic data, the number of observations will be 10% of real data.
    • If number of observation is less than 10, then in synthetic data, the number of observations is same as real data.
  • Each synthetic data file has the same name as the corresponding real data.
  • Every variable has the same variable name, same storage type (numeric, string), and same variable label as the real data.
  • Every categorical variable has the same value labels as the real data.
  • The value of a string variable is “the name of this data file & the name of this variable.”

For more information, contact Mark Lu, data manager.