In this appendix, we describe our methods for administering a survey to a nationally representative sample of K–12 public school principals via RAND’s American School Leader Panel (ASLP) and for analyzing the results of that survey.
As our methodology for collecting and analyzing survey data remains relatively consistent across ASLP surveys, the description of our methods below is updated from a previous publication analyzing results from another ASLP survey focused on school safety (Jackson et al., 2023).
The ASLP is a panel of K–12 public school principals.
It was designed to produce national estimates from the perspective of public school principals, as well as subgroup estimates by respondent and school characteristics.
Principals are recruited into the ASLP using probability-based sampling methods.
The sampling frame for the ASLP is a list of U.S. public school principals purchased from Market Data Retrieval (MDR), a market-research firm specializing in education.
The ASLP currently includes about 8,000 principals.
Principals who have joined the panel have agreed to participate in surveys several times per year and receive incentives for completing surveys.
After being recruited into the ASLP, panelists are then invited to participate in specific ASLP surveys using probability-based sampling methods.
Survey items were designed in-house by RAND researchers and shaped by prior work on school safety and security.
Although the survey sponsor provided feedback on survey items, RAND researchers maintained editorial control and were responsible for institutional review board review and approval of the final survey.
The survey was intentionally designed to gather information from both principals in schools with and without BTAM teams. More specifically, the survey was designed to allow respondents to progress through different pathways depending on their specific school context, as shown in Figure B.1.
Respondents were sorted onto one of the pathways depending on their responses to some initial screener items.
The main (longer) pathway was designed to collect detailed information from respondents in schools with BTAM teams. It was anticipated that this pathway would take respondents 20 minutes to complete.
Respondents in schools that did not have BTAM teams (or had only an external team) progressed through a shorter survey, designed to take at the most 15 minutes to complete. These participants received more scenarios about discipline incidents at their schools.
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