URBANICITY

The urban/suburban/rural designation in the School Administrator questionnaire comes from the QED data. According to the QED, the LOCALE variable from the NCES data was used to create the variable Add Health calls AURBAN. The NCES web site has the following LOCALE designations: 1) Central city of a Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA) or Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) with population of 250,000 or more; 2) Central city of a CMSA or MSA but not designated as a large central city; 3) Place within the CMSA or MSA of a large central city; 4) Place within the CMSA or MSA of a mid-size central city; 5) Place not within a CMSA or MSA but with population of 25,000 or more and defined as urban; 6) Place not within a CMSA or MSA with a population of at least 2,500 but less than 25,000; 7) Place not within a CMSA or MSA and designated as rural; and 8) Place within a CMSA or MSA designated as rural (this code not available prior to 1998).

Using these classifications, the tri-level urbanicity variable was created by the QED as follows: 1,2 = urban; 3-6 = suburban; 7,8 = rural.