Below you will find documentation for the UT Dallas Education Research Center, Texas Education Agency, and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board data. To learn more about the data, please review the documents below. As you click on the relevant documents, they will open in a separate window.

(Last updated on 2020-10-27)

UT Dallas ERC Documentation:

UT Dallas ERC Synthetic Data:

These files contain artificially generated values that mimic the structure of our ERC data files. Researchers may import the flat file data into the appropriate SAS, SPSS, or STATA format and use the synthetic data to develop and test programs.

Synthetic Data – New Version

Objectives of the synthetic data:

  • Help potential researchers understand the structure of the data
  • Prepare the analytical programs in advance

Description of the synthetic data:

  • All the observations in the real data have been truncated completely before generating synthetic data
  • The synthetic data is generated based on our current data holdings
  • Number of observations
    • If number of observation is greater than or equal to 1000, then in synthetic data, the number of observations will be 10% of real data
    • If number of observation is less than 1000 and greater than or equal to 10, then in synthetic data, the number of observations will be 1000
    • If number of observation is less than 10, then in synthetic data, the number of observations is same as real data
  • Keep same storage type for each variable in synthetic data as it in the real data
  • Keep same values labels for categorical variables
  • For the variables that are string type, the value is “name of this data file + name of this variable”
  • Keep the same directories structure as the real data
  • All the synthetic are in STATA format

Documentation:
The documentation for real data can also be used for synthetic data.

If you are interested in the new version of our synthetic data, please send an email to Mark Lu at [email protected]

Synthetic Data – Original Version

Below is the original version of our synthetic data. We have not provided the new version of these data files because of their large size. (When a smaller size is available, it will be uploaded here.) If you are interested in the new version that is described above, please send an email to Mark Lu at [email protected]

Texas Education Agency – Synthetic Data

TEA Synthetic Data Documentation PDF opens in a new tab

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board – Synthetic Data

THECB Synthetic Data Documentation PDF opens in a new tab

Texas Education Agency

Testing Data Documentation:

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board

Texas Public Universities Documentation:

Texas Health Related Institutions Documentation:

Texas Community, Technical, and State Colleges Documentation:

Texas Independent Colleges & Universities Documentation:

Financial Aid Database Documentation:

Appendices for THECB Manuals:

Documentation summarizing differences in the manuals related to Texas Public Universities, Texas Community, Technical, State Colleges and Texas Health-Related Institutions can be found in:

For questions, contact Greg Branch, deputy director.