NAEP Technical DocumentationStudent Nonresponse Weight Adjustment for the 2015 Assessment

			Development of Initial Student Nonresponse Cells Development of Final Student Nonresponse Cells Student Nonresponse Adjustment Factor Calculation

The student nonresponse adjustment procedure inflates the weights of assessed students to account for eligible sampled students who did not participate in the assessment. These inflation factors offset the loss of data associated with absent students. The adjustments are computed within nonresponse cells and are based on the assumption that the assessed and absent students within the same cell are more similar to one another than to students from different cells. Like its counterpart at the school level, the student nonresponse adjustment is intended to reduce the mean square error and thus improve the accuracy of NAEP assessment estimates. Also, like its counterpart at the school level, student nonresponse adjustments were carried out separately by sample; that is, by

• grade (4, 8, 12),
• school type (public, private), and
• assessment subject (mathematics, reading, science, or vocabulary).

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