The National Study of Writing Instruction - University at Albany

demographic data on each school, including poverty level, eligibility for free or reduced price
lunch, ethnic distribution of the student population, school size, and community type.
The sampling design included equal numbers of middle (Grades 6-8) and high (Grades 9-12)
school teachers in each of the 4 subjects, with oversampling of teachers in the 5 states included
in year 3 of NSWI (CA, MI, KY, TX, and NY) to allow further study of differences in curriculum
and instruction in these states.
In order to insure as good a sample as possible, school websites and, where necessary, phone
calls to the school office were used to verify names, addresses, and current teaching
responsibilities for all teachers in the initial sample. After eliminating names that could not be
verified, a stratified random sample of 6080 verified names and addresses was drawn within
the sampling frame outlined above. The sample was further divided in half to accommodate 2
versions of the questionnaire.
For analyses of national patterns, the data were weighted to reflect NCES estimates of the
number of middle and high school teachers in each state.
Instrumentation
Two versions of a 6 page (tri-fold) questionnaire were prepared.
Both versions of the questionnaire asked respondents to “select one specific class section that
is most typical of your teaching responsibilities this year,” and to answer all questions about
curriculum and instruction with reference to the selected class. Both also asked about class
size, tracking/ ability level, amount of writing during a grading period, school-wide initiatives
related to the teaching of writing, teaching experience, and supervisory responsibilities.
Although the questionnaires were completed anonymously, teachers were asked to list their
school name, city, and zip code, to allow later linking with the NCES Common Core of Data.
Form 1 included additional items related to the particular types of writing that were important
for the class, the influence of external examinations, test preparation, discipline-specific types
of writing and technical vocabulary, use of computers for writing, availability of technology, and
sources of teacher knowledge about writing.
Form 2 included additional items related to the types of written activities students had engaged
in for class work or homework during the past 5 days, teacher and student uses of technology
during the past 5 days, purposes served by writing for this particular class, writing as part of
course final exams, instructional techniques when students are asked to write, audiences for
student work, overall quality of student writing, teacher responses to student writing, subject
area responsibilities for teaching writing, and a description of an assignment “typical of the
work you require in this class.”
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