Data sgp is a set of tools that allows for the analysis of education assessment data. It provides a means of comparing student results across different schools, different districts, or even over time. This information can be useful for a variety of purposes, including making educational decisions and improving student achievement.
There are two common formats for longitudinal (time dependent) data: WIDE and LONG. WIDE format data has one case/row for each student and columns that represent variables associated with the student at different times. The SGPdata package, installed when you install the SGP software, includes exemplar WIDE and LONG data sets (sgpData and sgpData_LONG) to assist with setting up your data for use with SGP analyses.
Using long-format data with SGP is in general straightforward, but it does require more setup than using wide-format data. This is because longer format data has more rows for each student. The SGP package documentation includes a comprehensive description of how to prepare your data for use with the SGP functions.
A key feature of data sgp is its ability to provide statistical analyses of longitudinal data. This allows users to identify patterns in student performance over time, and to track the impact of interventions on student outcomes. This is especially valuable for states and school systems seeking to measure the impact of their programs on student achievement.
In addition, the SGP package also provides a series of graphical tools that enable users to display and analyze data in an easy-to-understand format. These tools include graphs of individual student performance and trend lines, comparison graphs, and scatterplots. The graphical tools are designed to work with either wide or long-format data, and can be used to display both the raw data and the results of SGP calculations.
Many of the higher level SGP functions assume that data is in long format, and that the embedded SGPstateData meta-data has been set up correctly. If you have questions about the setup of your data, please consult the SGP data analysis vignette or contact the SGP user support email list. In particular, sgpData is an anonymized panel data set that contains 5 years of annual vertically scaled student assessment data in WIDE format. Its first column, identifier, provides a unique student identifier, and the remaining 5 columns provide the student’s assessment score in each of the five years of testing. If a student does not have test scores in all 5 years, the column shows missing value (“NA”). The sgpData_LONG data set is an exemplar of the format required for the lower level functions studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections. It consists of a single student, a single year, and the student’s assessment score in each of 8 windows (3 windows annually). The sgptData_LONG data set is similar but excludes the demographic variables needed for student categorization by the SGP functions.
