Thank you for participating!

Below is a breakdown of the process and what will be asked of you as a participant

Recruitment:
  • Each school will provide UCLA with the names of the students who submitted an application for admission to the school, parent names and full contact info for those who were sent a letter and did not opt out.
  • UCLA staff will attend school events and provide information about the study for parents and students.
  • After the 2013 and 2014 lotteries and at least two week after a letter is received, UCLA staff will begin trying to contact the parent/guardian, tell them about the study and ask if they are interested in participating.
  • We will then get written informed consent from the parents and then conduct the interview with the student.

Data Collection:
  • Our research assistants will collect a 60-minute face-to-face survey with each student, after the 2013 and 2014 lottery & before the start of the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic school year, respectively.
  • Follow-up interviews will take place during the middle of the 10th, and 11th grade school years.  
  • Each survey will take place in locations that ensure privacy and are preferred by students.  UCLA staff will work with school staff to identify a room for these interviews at the charter schools when this is the students’ preference.  For those students who are attending a public school they have the option of doing the interview at home or a public place such as Starbucks or a library.
  • Retention communication. UCLA Staff will have brief communications with subject in between surveys via phone, email, Facebook, texting, etc. in order to enhance retention in the study.
  • Each student will receive $30 gift card in appreciation for their time at the completion of the baseline survey, $20 after each of the three follow-up surveys. Participants will receive an additional $10 gift card if they respond to all brief retention communications.
  • Each school will provide UCLA with copies of student transcripts listing each participating student’s statewide student identifier (SSID), which will be used to access available California Standardized Test (CST) scores since the 7th grade.  

Confidentiality:
  • To maintain student confidentiality, we will keep the identity of participants or potential participants, private and secure at all times.
  •  We will not publish or publicly present any study results that could potentially identify any student or their parents, or any school.
  • The survey data that we will collect will not include any personal identifying information (such as name, address, phone number).  Instead the survey data will have an encoded ID number that is linked the subject's personal identifying information in a separate database.  
  • All data will be kept in a secure fashion to prohibit anyone outside of our study investigators from accessing the data. 
  • The names and contact info for any participant or potential participant will not be shared with anyone outside our study staff.  
  • If a parent/student opts out of the study then that potential participant will be eliminated from our database.