SHPPS Questionnaires, Data & Documentation
The files on this page are approximately 4K to 2.3M.
Questionnaires, Data & Documentation
Using SHPPS Data
SHPPS 2012 Data Files, Methods and File Naming
SHPPS 2012 data include 13 questionnaires, 15 data files, and 15 codebooks. Files are grouped by administration level (state and district) and by component.
Data Files and Methods
School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS) data are available in three file formats: Access®, SPSS® and ASCII. The Access, SPSS, and ASCII data can be downloaded and used as is. Additionally, SAS® programs are provided to convert the ASCII data into SAS datasets for use in those packages.
File Names
File names include SHPPS_ followed by three parts. The first part identifies the component, the second part identifies the level, and the third part indicates the survey year.
Component | Part |
Health education | hlthed |
Physical education and activity | physed |
Health services | hlthser |
Mental health and social services | mental |
Healthy and safe school environment | env |
Nutrition services | nutr |
Faculty and staff health promotion | faculty |
Status | status |
Level | Part |
---|---|
State | s |
District | d |
The questionnaire and codebook files use the same naming convention but add the words “questionnaire” or “codebook” to the file name.
For example, the files for health education at the state level would be:
Health education file | Name |
---|---|
SPSS data | SHPPS_hlthes2012.sav |
Questionnaire | SHPPS_hlthes2012questionnaire.pdf |
Codebook | SHPPS_hlthes2012codebook.pdf |
Status Files
The status files contain additional information for the component-specific datasets. There are four status files, one for each level (state and district). The status files contain
- Enrollment information
- Region of country
- Overall weight variable to be used when the datasets are combined across components
Each status file contains a specific variable that needs to be used to link its associated dataset. For example, to link the state status file with another SHPPS state-level dataset, the variable STCMSID is used.
Questionnaires
Level | Variable |
---|---|
State |
STCMSID |
District |
DISTCMSID |
The questionnaires are available in PDF format.
Codebooks
The codebooks are available in PDF format. The codebooks contain the
- Variable names*
- Variable labels
- Values
- Formatted values
- Unweighted counts
*The first three letters of the variable name identify the questionnaire. The number at the end of the variable names represents the question number from the associated questionnaire.
Using ASCII Files
- Save the ASCII data file to a folder on your computer.
- Specify column locations for each variable as needed by the software you are using.
Note: How to use the ASCII data varies from one software package to another. Column positions for each variable usually have to be specified. Column positions for each variable can be found in the documentation for each year’s data. Consult your software documentation for more information.
Using Access Files:
- Save the Access file to a folder on your computer.
- Uncompress the Access file.
Note: The file is stored in compressed form to improve download time; it will need to be uncompressed before it can be used. See File Formats Help for more information on uncompressing the file.
Using SPSS Files:
- Save the SPSS data file to a folder on your computer.
- Open the SPSS data file in SPSS.
Using SAS Files
- Download the SHPPS 2012 SAS Format Program.
- Save the SAS Format Program, SAS Input Program, and the ASCII data files to a folder on your computer.
- Open the SAS Format Program in SAS and edit it according to the instructions included in the comments in the program.
- Run the program. This will create a permanent format library in the folder specified in the SAS program.
- Open the SAS Input Program in SAS and edit it according to the instructions included in the comments in the program.
- Run the program. This will read the ASCII data file and convert it into a permanent SAS dataset for the particular year in the folder specified in the SAS program.
Note: Each year of SHPPS data should go in its own folder because each year has its own format library. Format libraries are not comparable across years. See Using the SAS Format Library for more information.
SAS Format Library
The SAS format library contains the formats used to make SAS output more readable. Formats are linked to the data so results are displayed as words (“Yes” or “No”, for instance) instead of numbers (1 or 2). The SAS SHPPS data files are designed to use the companion format library. You should download both the data file and the format library if you want to use SAS to analyze SHPPS data. One format library is used for all the SHPPS 2012 data, and another is used for all the SHPPS 2006 data.
The following example SAS program shows how to use the format library. It assumes that both the data file and the format library have been downloaded to “c:data”. Note that the program contains two libname statements. The first libname statement indicates where the data file is located; the second libname statement indicates where the format library is located.
General example:
libname mydata ‘c:data’; /* tells SAS where the data are */ proc freq data=mydata.<name of SAS data file>; run; |
SHPPS specific example using the district level health education data and running a table for the variable HED1:
libname mydata ‘c:data’; /* tells SAS where the data are */ proc freq data=mydata hlthedd; run; |
Using the format library is recommended but technically is optional. If you do not want to use the format library, include the following statement at the start of your SAS program:
options nofmterr; /* tells SAS to not look for formats */ |
Please note that each year of SHPPS data has its own format library.
For further information on using format libraries, please refer to the documentation provided with the SAS system.