NAEP Technical DocumentationCreating the Master Catalog

The master catalog resides in an item-level relational database that contains the processing (e.g., response options), labeling, classification (e.g., content), and location information for each assessment exercise and other data variables in the NAEP database. The control parameters are used by the access routines in the analysis programs to define the manner in which the data values are to be transformed and processed.

The master catalog contains attributes associated with every variable on the databases. Examples of these attributes are descriptive labels, discrete or categorical response values (for discrete variables, such as multiple-choice items and professionally scored items), classification categories, field type, and field width.

According to NAEP design, it is possible for assessment items (cognitive or survey questions) to appear in more than one student sample and, though infrequent, in more than one block within each sample. The location fields of the catalog record contain the age cohort, block, and, where applicable, the order within the block for each appearance of the assessment item.

The master catalog file is constructed concurrently with the collection and transcription of the national and state assessment data so that it is ready for use by analysis programs when the database is created. As new data fields are derived and added to the database, their corresponding descriptive and control information are entered into the master catalog.

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