Background Questions
In addition to the cognitive items, background questions are given to participating students:
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General student background questions are given to all assessed students of a given grade. Student answers to background questions are used to gather information about factors such as race or ethnicity, school attendance, and academic expectations. Answers on the questionnaires also provide information about factors believed to influence academic performance, including homework habits, the language spoken in the home, and the quantity of reading materials in the home. Because many of these questions document changes that occur over time, they remain unchanged over assessment years.
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Subject-specific background questions are given to all assessed students of a given subject area and grade. Student subject area questions gather three categories of information:
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time spent studying the subject;
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instructional experiences in the subject; and
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attitudes toward and perceptions about the subject and the test.
Because these questions are specific to each subject area, they can probe in some detail the use of specialized resources such as calculators in mathematics classes.
Similar to the development of the cognitive items, the development of background questions is a consensual process that involves staff work, field testing, and review by external advisory groups. The issues, questions, and field-test results are reviewed by external consultants who identify specific questions to be included in the final questionnaires. NAEP item developers review all questions to ensure fairness and quality. Then the questions undergo reviews by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Once clearance is granted by NCES and OMB, each background question is typeset into the general background or subject-specific background blocks as part of the student booklets.
NAEP also administers background questionnaires to teachers and school administrators. Although the development process is similar to that discussed above, these teacher and school-administrator questionnaires are individual booklets.
The table below provides links to the PDF files of the general background questions and subject-specific background questions administered in the 2000 and 2001 assessments.
Links to NAEP student questionnaires (in PDF format), by grade level, subject, and year: 2000 and 2001
| Subject and assessment year |
Grade 4 |
Grade 8 |
Grade 12 |
| Mathematics (2000) |
79KB  (79KB) |
119KB (119KB) |
147KB (147KB) |
| Reading (2000) |
113KB (113KB) |
† |
† |
| Science (2000) |
72KB (72KB) |
102KB (102KB) |
128KB (128KB) |
| Geography (2001) |
84KB (84KB) |
106KB (106KB) |
120KB (120KB) |
| U.S. history (2001) |
84KB (84KB) |
106KB (106KB) |
120KB (120KB) |
Last updated 12 June 2008 (MH)
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