Part A TALIS 2018 Recruitment & Field Test

The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is an international survey of teachers and principals focusing on the working conditions of teachers and the teaching and learning practices in schools. The United States will administer TALIS for the second time in 2018, having participated in 2013 but not in 2008. TALIS 2018 is sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the U.S., TALIS 2018 is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Each administration of TALIS is a collaborative effort by the participating countries, guided by their governments on the basis of shared policy driven interests.

TALIS 2018 has a strong focus on teachers’ professional environment, teaching conditions, and their impact on school and teacher effectiveness. TALIS 2018 will also address teacher training and professional development, teachers’ appraisal, school climate, school leadership, teachers’ instructional approaches, and teachers’ pedagogical practices.

In order to meet the international data collection schedule for the spring 2017 field test, questionnaires must be finalized by December 2016 and recruiting activities begun by October 2016. This submission requests approval for:

recruitment and pre-survey activities for the 2017 field test sample;
administration of the field test; and
school recruitment and pre-survey activities for the 2018 main study sample¹.

It is important to note that because TALIS is a collaborative international study, the U.S. administration of TALIS operates under some constraints, particularly around the schedule and the availability of instruments, which are developed and negotiated internationally. For example, at the time that this package is submitted, the final versions of the field test questionnaires are not yet available. Instead, in Appendix B, NCES has included the international versions of the field test questionnaire items with proposed adaptations to these items for use in the U.S. The final versions of the questionnaires will be submitted to OMB as a change request upon the approval of this clearance package.

Further, in order to begin recruiting schools for the main study by September 2017, NCES will submit a change request to OMB in May 2017 that will provide the final main study recruitment materials and parental consent letters, document any changes to the design and procedures for the main study and potentially to the main study respondent burden estimates. In the fall 2017, NCES will submit a request for the spring of 2018 main study data collection, with a corresponding 30-day notice published in the federal register. The main study questionnaires will be a subset of the field test instruments.

A. JUSTIFICATION

A.1 Importance of Information

As part of a continuing cycle of international education studies, the U.S., through NCES, is currently and in the coming years participating in several international assessments and surveys. TALIS, sponsored by OECD, is one of these studies. TALIS 2018 is part of the larger international program that NCES has actively participated in through collaboration with, and representation at, the OECD. Through this active participation, NCES has sought to strengthen the quality, consistency, and timeliness of international data. To continue this effort, the U.S. must follow through with well-organized and executed data gathering activities within the nation’s boundaries. These efforts allow NCES to build a comprehensive data network that reports on the status of education in the U.S. and informs decision-making at the national, state, and local levels.

Participating in TALIS 2018 will allow the U.S. to continue to compare with and learn from other countries working to improve their education systems and using a variety of approaches. Reponses from school principals and teachers cover subjects such as professional development they have received; their teaching beliefs and practices; the review of teachers’ work and the feedback and recognition they received about their work; and various other school leadership, management, and workplace issues.

TALIS 2018 questionnaire development began in January 2016 and continue into summer of 2016.A pilot study began in May 2016 (the U.S. does not participate in the pilot study), and the field test will begin in February 2017. The main study will occur in the Southern hemisphere from October through December 2017 and in the Northern hemisphere from March through May 2018. The initial report from the main study data collection is due to be released in June 2019.

A.2 Purposes and Uses of Data

The OECD launched the Education Indicators Project (INES) to help create a system of indicators for cross-national comparisons in education for the use of policy makers, consumers, and private industry. INES achieves its purpose by collecting and analyzing a set of key indicators for international comparison; providing an international forum for the exchange of methods and practices of developing and using education indicators for national policymakers; and contributing to evaluation methodology and developing more valid, reliable, and comprehensive indicators for use in policymaking. TALIS has been designed to increase the international information available to OECD countries on teachers, teaching, and the impact that teachers can have on student learning. The overall objective of TALIS is to provide international indicators and policy-relevant analysis on teachers and teaching in order to help countries develop and review policies that create the conditions for effective schooling.

The TALIS 2018 administration will focus on the ISCED² Level 2 teacher workforce. ISCED Level 2 is also known as lower secondary education and usually lasts between 2 and 6 years, and begins around age 11. Middle school and junior high school (grades 7 through 9) in the U.S. are classified as ISCED Level 2. The administration of TALIS 2018 will include both classroom teachers of lower secondary education school programs as well as the principals of their schools. Teachers that teach in special needs-only schools, that teach exclusively adults, occasional or emergency teachers, or teachers who are on long-term leave and are not expected to be back teaching at the time of data collection will not be included in the sample. Very small schools and schools in remote areas may also be excluded.

TALIS Instruments: Every participating country must implement two core background questionnaires for TALIS 2018: a principal, or school, questionnaire and a teacher questionnaire. These instruments have been developed to address the TALIS 2018 questionnaire framework, which defines 11 themes described below in section A.4, including teaching and learning practices and beliefs, professional development of teachers, school governance, job satisfaction, teacher self-efficacy, and innovation. In addition, the questionnaires include items that have been administered in multiple cycles of TALIS, allowing the investigation of patterns and trends over time. Countries adapt the questions to fit their national context and the questionnaires are reviewed and professionally verified to ensure they remain comparable across countries.

A.3 Improved Information Technology (Reduction of Burden)

The TALIS 2018 design and procedures are prescribed internationally. Data collection involves participants completing a 45 minute questionnaire (principal) and a 60 minute questionnaire (teacher). In an attempt to reduce the amount of paper and printing costs, the TALIS survey instruments for the field test and main study will be administered online, although paper versions will be made available to participants upon request.

A.4 Efforts to Identify Duplication

The U.S., through NCES, has been conducting its own national survey of schools and school personnel called the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) since 1985, currently redesigned as the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). Additionally, the U.S. continues to conduct the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program, which includes teacher and school questionnaires, and participates in several international assessments which have teacher and school questionnaires, including the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The teacher and school questionnaires used in TALIS differ from these studies’ questionnaires in several important ways.

SASS and NTPS focus on collecting foundational school and organizational teacher characteristics, such as teacher demand and shortage, teacher and administrator characteristics, school programs, general conditions in schools, perceptions of school climate, and problems in school, teacher compensation, and hiring practices. TALIS items, on the other hand, aim to form connections between these key characteristics and highlight the underlying mechanisms driving teacher practice. More specifically, where SASS and NTPS collect a large amount of information on a teacher’s background, training, and in-field or out-of-field credentials, TALIS investigates other factors that may impact instructional practice such as items focused on instructional beliefs and the likelihood of utilizing various pedagogical strategies. Notably, TALIS also focuses on gathering the information necessary to make connections between teacher appraisal and feedback and the type, frequency, and duration of professional development opportunities teachers receive.

In addition to conceptual differences in item design, TALIS and SASS/NTPS also differ in the measurement of items. In the areas where there is some overlap between these two survey instruments, the response categories for teachers are quite different and not interchangeable. For example, whereas the duration of professional development items in SASS focus on the number of hours spent in professional development activities, concentrating on a teacher’s primary content area, TALIS focuses on the number of days spent in a variety of different professional development areas. Further, while SASS/NTPS focuses on 12 month periods of inquiry, TALIS focuses on professional development over 18 months. Therefore, for both conceptual and measurement reasons, alternate sources for these data do not exist. In 2016, NCES convened a task force to compare the newest NTPS and TALIS questionnaires to identify potential areas of overlap and avoid duplicative efforts in the latest iterations of both surveys.

The studies NAEP, TIMSS, PIRLS, and PISA also have teacher and school questionnaires, but their focus is student achievement in concentrated subject areas. NAEP collects information about teachers’ backgrounds and instructional practices as they relate to student achievement, and investigates the relationship between students’ achievement and various school and teacher factors that may influence this achievement. TIMSS seeks information about teachers’ background, instructional practices, and attitudes toward teaching a specific subject (mathematics or science). PIRLS intends to supply information about teacher backgrounds, classroom resources, and instructional materials for teaching reading. PISA does not intend to provide direct information about improving instructional practice in the classroom, but its focus is background information related to general school context.

TALIS 2018 focuses on 11 themes motivated by current theory and research, including:

Teachers’ instructional practices and beliefs: teaching practices and beliefs with a focus on classroom management; teachers’ views on resources of effective teaching; teachers’ openness to adopting innovative teaching practices; and their views on school conditions and incentives to foster innovation.
School leadership: the profile of school leadership and management styles (including indicators on the roles and functions of school leaders); and distributed/team leadership.
Teachers’ professional practices: mobility, teaching practices; cooperation among teaching staff; teaching special education needs students; the pedagogical use of technology (while ensuring there is no overlap with PISA); and student assessment practices.
Teacher education and initial preparation: level and year of teacher training completion, duration of education; grade range teachers were prepared to teach; type of school at which teachers were prepared to teach; entrance requirements (school exam, university exam, practical experience); school grade in comparison to the age cohort; degree of subject specialization (number of majors and minors, training as generalists); major in the subject being taught; relative emphasis to learn content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, and practical experience;
Teacher feedback and development: in-service professional development (types of activities, participation rates, intensity of participation, mentoring, and induction programs); the needs and demands for in-service professional development; barriers preventing participation in in-service professional development; the perceived impact of in-service professional development; and initial teacher education; forms of professional development that impact teaching and other aspects of professional practice; connections between teacher feedback and development; feedback as a feature of effective professional development; feedback supporting innovation in teaching practice.
School climate: disciplinary climate; teacher-student relations; teachers’ working time; and parent-teacher and parent-school relations.
Job satisfaction: overall job satisfaction; teacher perception of the value of the teaching profession; teachers’ views on the factors that would increase their job satisfaction and perception of the value of the profession.
Teacher human resource issues and stakeholder relations: linking teacher perception of the value of the profession with more specific links to stakeholders (parents, students, school leaders, media, and society at large); teachers’ views regarding the professionalism of teaching and for improving the status of teaching; teachers’ perception of linking pay to (student) performance and assessments.
Teacher self-efficacy: the extent to which teachers feel capable of performing general teaching practices and specific instruction to foster 21^st century skills; the relations between self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and further relevant teacher outcomes; individual differences in self-efficacy with respect to teachers’ age, education, gender, and school environment.
Innovation: the degree to which teachers are prepared to foster innovative thinking in the classroom and support the development of 21^st century skills, school context and climate for promoting innovativeness.
Diversity: policies and practices surrounding the recognition of diversity and supports for inclusion at the school and in the classroom.

These 11 themes encompass both new topics deemed important in the current teaching landscape and retain specific topics covered in TALIS 2013. The results of TALIS will inform education policy and spur further investigation into differences within and between countries. Alternate sources for these data do not exist. This submission represents participation of the U.S. in TALIS 2018 involving 44 countries. The U.S. must collect the same information at the same time as the other nations for purposes of making international comparisons. No other study in the U.S. will be using the instruments developed by the international sponsoring organization, and thus no alternative sources of comparable data are available.

In order to participate in the international study, the U.S. must agree to administer the same core instruments that will be administered in the other countries. Because the items measuring the teaching workforce, the conditions of teaching, and the learning environments of schools have been developed with intensive international coordination, any changes to the TALIS 2018 instruments would also require international coordination. Thus, opportunities to impact the survey instruments are limited to key international dates. The next opportunity to discuss changes to the instruments will be after the field test, during the summer of 2017.

A.5 Minimizing Burden for Small Entities

No small entities are part of this sample. The school sample for TALIS will contain small-, medium-, and large-size schools from a wide range of school types, including private schools, and burden will be minimized wherever possible for all institutions participating in the data collection. In addition, contractor staff will assume as much of the organization and survey administration as possible within each school.

A.6 Frequency of Data Collection

TALIS 2018 is the second administration of TALIS in the U.S. The survey is conducted on a 5-year cycle, as prescribed by the international sponsoring organization, and adherence to this schedule is necessary to establish consistency in survey operations among the many participating countries.

A.7 Special Circumstances

No special circumstances exist in the data collection plan for TALIS 2018 field test that would necessitate unique or unusual manners of data collection.

A.8 Consultations Outside NCES

Consultations outside NCES have been extensive and will continue throughout the life of the project. The nature of the study requires this, because international studies typically are developed as a cooperative enterprise involving all participating countries. TALIS 2018 is being developed and operated, under the auspices of the OECD, by a consortium of organizations:

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Karine Tremblay, TALIS Project Manager

2, rue André Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex16, FRANCE, Tel: +33 (1) 4524 9366, Fax: +33 (1) 4524 9098

IEA Data Processing and Research Center (DPC); Hamburg, Germany)

Dr. Steffen Knoll, TALIS Operations Study Director

Mexikoring 37, 22297 Hamburg, Germany, Tel: +49 40 48 500 500, Fax: +49 40 48 500 501

Statistics Canada (Ottawa, Canada)

Jean Dumais, Statistical Consultation Group International Co-operation and Corporate Statistical Methods Division

R.H. Coats Building 25th floor 100 Tunney’s Pasture Driveway Ottawa ON K1A OT6 Canada

Tel: +1 613 863 9401

A.9 Payments or Gifts to Respondents

School and teacher participation is vital to reaching the international standard for the target sample size needed for a country to be a part of the study. Currently, the minimum response rate targets required by OECD are at least 75 percent of schools after replacement and 75 percent of selected teachers, while the NCES statistical standards require a minimum response rate target of 85 percent at the school and teacher levels. Historically, these high response rates have been difficult to achieve in school-based studies. Based on the international standards, the U.S. did not achieve an acceptable level of response in the 2013 cycle, the only country of 34 participating education systems to not have met the minimum. As a result, the OECD shows data from the U.S. separately from other participating countries in their TALIS 2013 report, and does not include U.S. data when computing international averages or creating indices using 2013 TALIS data.

NCES is using a multi-pronged approach to address the challenge of gaining school and teacher cooperation and learn as much as possible during the field test about how to achieve acceptable participation rates. First, our TALIS contractor will review the most recent TALIS 2013 experience to understand where possible improvements can be made in materials and communication with schools. Staff with experience working on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), PISA, other international assessments, other large-scale data collections, and with expertise in effective approaches to school recruitment are providing input so that strategies can be identified for achieving high response rates and serve as an ongoing source of ideas and feedback. We will also continue the use of effective incentives. The proposed amounts for schools, school coordinators, and teachers are described below and are based on the amounts used in PISA 2015 (OMB 1850-0755 v.16-17) which successfully reached acceptable levels of participation.

Schools. Schools participating in TALIS will receive $200. In order to meet the minimum school response rates mandated by the TALIS international governing board, and in order to compensate the school for the increased disruption, we believe it is necessary to offer schools this incentive to encourage participation.

School coordinators. The school coordinator will be offered $200. The role of the school coordinator is critical for the success of the study. The coordinator is expected to coordinate logistics with the data collection contractor; supply a list of eligible teachers for sampling to the data collection contractor; communicate with teachers about the study to encourage participation.

Teachers: The field test will implement a teacher questionnaire delivered as an on-line instrument with a paper version available upon request. Selected teachers will be offered $20 for completing the questionnaire.

The school coordinators are an integral part of the success of TALIS in schools. While we try to minimize their burden, they are our link to the school and teachers. We want to limit as much as we can the possibility of the school coordinator feeling burdened or unrewarded for their time and effort.

A.10 Assurance of Confidentiality

The TALIS 2018 plan for protecting the security and confidentiality of data conforms with the following federal regulations and policies: the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 20, § 552a), Privacy Act Regulations (34 CFR Part 5b), the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA 2002: 20 U.S.C., § 9573), the Computer Security Act of 1987, NCES Restricted-Use Data Procedures Manual, and the NCES Statistical Standards.

The plan for maintaining confidentiality includes signed confidentiality agreements and notarized nondisclosure affidavits obtained from all personnel who will have access to individually identifiable data. Also included in the plan is personnel training regarding the meaning of confidentiality, particularly as it relates to handling requests for information and providing assurance to respondents about the protection of their responses; controlled and protected access to computer files under the control of a single data base manager; built-in safeguards concerning status monitoring and receipt control systems; and a secured and operator-manned in-house computing facility.

Letters and other materials will be sent to school administrators and teachers describing the voluntary nature of this survey. The materials sent will describe the study and convey the extent to which respondents and their responses will be kept confidential (copies of letters and other recruitment materials to be used are included in appendix A). The statement about confidentiality on the survey instruments will be based on the statement included in the school and teacher FAQs (appendix A) under the section: “What will happen with the collected data?” The following statement will appear on the front cover of the questionnaires and the opening screen of the online data collection system (the principal questionnaire will include wording indicating that it will take approximately 45 minutes to complete, and the teacher questionnaire that it will take approximately 60 minutes to complete):

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the U.S. Department of Education, conducts the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) in the United States as authorized by the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (20 U.S.C., § 9543). Your responses are protected by federal statute (20 U.S.C., § 9573) and may be used only for statistical purposes and may not be disclosed, or used, in identifiable form for any other purpose except as required by law.

According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. The valid OMB control number for this voluntary survey is 1850-0888. The time required to complete this survey is estimated to average [60/45] minutes per response, including the time to review instructions, search existing data resources, gather the data needed, and complete and review the survey. If you have any comments concerning the accuracy of the time estimate, suggestions for improving this survey, or any comments or concerns regarding the status of your individual submission of this survey, please write to: Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Potomac Center Plaza, 550 12^th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20202.

OMB No. 1850-0888, Approval Expires xx/xx/2019.

Data files, accompanying software, and documentation for TALIS 2018 field test and main study will be delivered to NCES at the end of the project. No school names or addresses will be included in these files or documentation. Data from the field test will not be used for reporting purposes (there will be no data files for the field test); they will be used to determine the validity and reliability of the items and instruments in preparation for the main study. Data from the main study will be used by NCES to produce a U.S. national report based on TALIS findings. It will be released at the same time as the international report from the OECD in June 2019.

NCES understands the legal and ethical need to protect the confidentiality of the TALIS respondents and has extensive experience in developing data files for release that meet the government’s requirements to protect individually identifiable data from disclosure. The contractor will conduct a thorough disclosure analysis of the TALIS 2018 main study data when preparing the data files for use by researchers. There will be no data files for the field test; only for the main study. To protect the confidentiality of respondents as required by 20 U.S.C., schools with high disclosure risk will be identified, and a variety of masking strategies will be used to ensure that individuals may not be identified from the data files. These masking strategies include swapping data and omitting key identification variables (i.e., school name and address) from both the public- and restricted-use files (though the restricted-use file will include an NCES school ID that can be linked to other NCES databases that identify schools); omitting key identification variables such as state or ZIP Code from the public-use file; and collapsing categories or developing categories for continuous variables to retain information for analytic purposes while preserving confidentiality in public-use files.

A.11 Sensitive Questions

The TALIS 2018 field test does not include questions usually considered to be of a highly sensitive nature, such as items concerning religion, substance abuse, or sexual activity. There is also no indication that items of a sensitive nature will be included in the main study.

A.12 Estimates of Burden

The burden to respondents for the TALIS 2018 field test and main study is calculated for the estimated time required of special handling districts staff and school staff (school administrator, school coordinators, and teachers) to complete recruitment, pre-survey, and survey activities (Table 1). Survey participation includes the time involved to complete teacher and school administrator questionnaires. Recruitment and pre-survey activities include the time involved for (a) special handling districts to review TALIS research application and (b) schools to decide to participate and who will distribute questionnaire to the school administrators and teachers, completing teacher listing forms, and notifying sampled teachers.

The estimated response burden for schools is based on a 45 minute online school questionnaire for administrators and a 60 minute online teacher questionnaire (each including 15 minutes for instructions and each available in a paper and pencil version available upon request), 90 minutes for school administrators during the recruitment process, and an average of 4 hours for school coordinators to coordinate logistics with the data collection contractor, supply a list of eligible teachers, and encourage teachers to participate in the survey.

We estimate that there may be 5 special handling districts in the field test sample – those known to require completion of a research application before they will allow schools under their jurisdiction to participate in a study. Estimated burden hours for special handling districts are included under “Special Handling Districts IRB Staff Approval” and “Special Handling Districts IRB Panel Approval” and reflect estimated burden associated with school district staff reviewing and processing special handling district research application materials. Contacting special districts begins with updating district information based on what can be gleaned from online sources, followed by calls to verify the information about where to send the completed required research application forms, and, if necessary, to collect contact information for this process. During the call, inquiry is made about the amount of time the districts spend reviewing similar research applications. The estimated number of such districts represents those with particularly detailed application forms and lengthy processes for approval. This operation should begin in late fall 2016 to allow sufficient time for special districts’ review processes. We will begin contacting these districts upon receiving OMB’s approval, and continue to work with them until we receive a final response (approval or denial of request) up until April 30, 2017.

Table 1. Burden estimates for TALIS 2018 field test and main study (MS)

	Sample	Expected response rate	Number of respondents	Number of responses	Burden per respondent (minutes)	Total burden (hours)
Field Test Recruitment and Pre-Survey Activity
Special Handling Districts IRB Staff	5	1	5	5	120	10
Special Handling Districts IRB Panel	30	1	30	30	60	30
School administrator	30	1	30	30	90	45
School coordinator	35	0.85	30	30	240	120
Field Test Survey Participation
School administrator	35	0.85	30	30	45	22
Teacher	700	0.85	595	595	60	595
Total Burden Field Test			690	720		822
Main Study Recruitment and Pre-Survey Activity
Special Handling Districts IRB Staff	24	1	24	24	120	48
Special Handling Districts IRB Panel	144	1	144	144	60	144
School administrator	170	1	170	170	90	255
School coordinator	170	1	170	170	240	680
Main Study Survey Participation
School administrator	200	0.85	170	170	45	128
Teacher	4,000	0.85	3,400	3,400	60	3,400
Total Burden MS Recruitment			508	508		1,127
Total Burden requested			1,198	1,228		1,949

The estimated hourly rates for middle school and secondary school teachers/instructional staff, noninstructional staff/coordinators, and principals ($28.44, $21.34, $44.68 respectively) are based on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) May 2015 National Occupational and Employment Wage Estimates³. For the TALIS main study recruitment and field test a total of 1,949 burden hours are anticipated, resulting in an estimated burden time cost to respondents of approximately $58,747.

A.13 Total Annual Cost Burden

Other than the time burden cost associated with completing the TALIS questionnaires (estimated above in Section A.12), the field test imposes no additional cost to respondents.

A.14 Annualized Cost to Federal Government

The total cost to the Federal Government for conducting the TALIS 2018 field test as described in the current request is estimated to be $383,169. The national contract for the main study has not yet been finalized.

A.15 Program Changes or Adjustments

This is a reinstatement of a previously approved collection and, as such, shows an increase in respondent burden. In addition, TALIS 2018, as compared to the previous TALIS rounds, includes expanded themes and topics in the school and teacher questionnaires, as well as increased requirements in the respondent sample size for the field test from 200 teachers to at least 600 teachers in at least 30 schools.

A.16 Plans for Tabulation and Publication

For the TALIS 2018 field test there will be no published report of the findings. For the main study, an analysis of the U.S. and international data will be conducted to report on the U.S. national results in relation to the international results. Based on proposed analyses of the international data set by Statistics Canada, and the need for NCES to report results from the perspective of an U.S. constituency, a plan is being prepared for the statistical analysis of the U.S. national data set as compared to the international data set. Analysis of data will include examinations of the survey instruments of U.S. teachers and school principals in relation to their international counterparts. All reports and publications will be coordinated with the release of information from the international organizing body. Planned publications and reports for the TALIS 2018 main study include the following:

General Audience Report. This report will present information on the status of the teaching workforce, the conditions of teaching, and the learning environments of schools in the U.S. in comparison to the other international participants, written for a non-specialist, general U.S. audience. This report will present the results of analyses in a clear and non-technical way, conveying how U.S. results compare on the international stage, and what factors, if any, may be associated with the U.S. results.

Survey Operations/Technical Report. This report will document the procedures used in the main study (e.g., sampling, recruitment, data collection, scoring, weighting, and imputation) and discuss any problems encountered. The primary purpose of the main study survey operations/technical report is to document those steps taken by the U.S. in conducting and completing the study. This report will include an analysis of non-response bias, which will assess the presence and extent of bias due to nonresponse. Selected characteristics of respondent teachers and schools will be compared with those of non-respondent schools and teachers to provide information on whether and how they differ from respondents along dimensions for which we have data for the nonresponding units, as required by NCES standards.

Electronic versions of each publication will be made available on the NCES website. Schedules for tabulation and publication of TALIS 2018 results in the U.S. are dependent upon receiving data files from the international sponsoring organization. The expected data collection dates and a tentative reporting schedule are as follows:

Activity	Timeframe
Pilot study (the U.S. will not participate in the pilot study)	May 2016
Begin field test recruitment	October 2016
Field test data collection	February 2017
Deliver raw field test data to international sponsoring organization	March 2017
Receive Field Test Report from international sponsors / Recruit schools for the main study	June – July 2017
Begin main study recruitment	September 2017
Main study data collection	March – May 2018
Receive final data files from international sponsors	November – December 2018
Produce General Audience Report, Survey Operations/Technical Report for the U.S.	February – June 2019

A.17 Display OMB Expiration Date

The OMB expiration date will be displayed on all data collection and recruitment materials.

A.18 Exceptions to Certification Statement

No exceptions are requested to the "Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions" of OMB Form 83-I.

1 The materials that will be used in the 2018 main study will be based upon the field test materials included in this submission. Additionally, this submission is designed to adequately justify the need for and overall practical utility of the full study and to present the overarching plan for all of the phases of the data collection, providing as much detail about the measures to be used as is available at the time of this submission. As part of this submission, NCES is publishing a notice in the Federal Register allowing first a 60- and then a 30-day public comment period. For the final proposal for the full study, after the field test, NCES will publish a notice in the Federal Register allowing an additional 30-day public comment period on the final details of 2018 main study.

2International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) of the UNESCO

3 The average hourly earnings of middle school teachers/instructional staff in the May 2015 National Occupational and Employment Wage Estimates sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is $28.25, of secondary school teachers is $28.98, of noninstructional staff is $21.34, and of principals/education administrators is $44.68. Source: BLS Occupation Employment Statistics, http://data.bls.gov/oes/ data type: Occupation codes: Middle School Teachers, except Special Education and Career/Technical Education (25-2022), Secondary School Teachers (25-2030); Education, Training, and Library Workers, All Other (Elementary and Secondary Schools) (25-9099); and Education Administrators, Elementary and Secondary Schools (11-9032); accessed on August 3, 2016. If mean hourly wage was not provided it was computed assuming 2,080 hours per year. The combined estimated hourly rate for middle school and secondary school teachers/instructional staff was calculated assuming about 74% of TALIS sampled teachers to be teaching middle school grades and 26% secondary grades [based on Table 2-2 in the U.S. technical report for TALIS that shows 26% of teachers from secondary schools, 35% from middle/junior high schools, and 38% from other (k-12, k-8, etc)].

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