MDRC's The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trials Restricted Access File (THE-RCT RAF)

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) John Diamond, MDRC; Michael J. Weiss, MDRC; Colin Hill, MDRC; Austin Slaughter, MDRC; Stanley Dai, MDRC

Version: View help for Version V3

Version Title: View help for Version Title Initial full RAF upload

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Data			12/03/2025 11:34:AM
Documentation			11/24/2025 01:38:PM

Project Citation:

Diamond, John, Weiss, Michael J., Hill, Colin, Slaughter, Austin, and Dai, Stanley. MDRC’s The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trials Restricted Access File (THE-RCT RAF). Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-12-03. https://doi.org/10.3886/E240388V3

Project Description

Summary: The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trial (THE-RCT) study aims to capitalize on existing data from postsecondary education RCTs to foster substantive and methodological scholarship and encourage teaching and learning opportunities. The cornerstone of THE-RCT is a restricted access file (RAF). This version contains individual-participant data from more than 30 of MDRC's higher education RCTs covering over 50 institutions and over 50,000 students. The data were originally collected as part of different randomized controlled trial evaluations of a variety of higher education interventions. The data were collected for different student samples, at different times, and in different locations for each study.

The data were collected from four data sources:

Baseline: Baseline student demographic data (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, etc.) were gathered, either via a survey administered to students upon joining the study (but prior to random assignment) or from study colleges' administrative records;
College Transcript: Student transcript data (e.g., enrollment, credits attempted, credits earned, GPA) were provided by the study colleges or state higher education agencies;
College Credential Attainment: Student credential attainment data were provided by the study colleges or state higher education agencies;
National Student Clearinghouse: Student enrollment and credential attainment data were provided by the National Student Clearinghouse via their StudentTracker database. This includes enrollment and credential attainment data at colleges beyond the colleges where the study took place.

The RAF contains student-level data, including baseline demographics (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity), outcomes (e.g., enrollment, credits earned, credentials), an indicator of experimental group (e.g., program or control group), and study variables (e.g., a variable that allows users to link to the RCT-level database).

Funding Sources: Arnold Ventures; United States Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (R305A190161)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: academic achievement; academic degrees; academic guidance counseling; community colleges; high school students; high school graduates; high schools; higher education; postsecondary education; remedial education; student financial aid; student retention; college students

Geographic Coverage: United States, Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin

Time Period(s): 2003 – 2024

Collection Date(s): 2003 – 2024

Universe: US college students

Data Type(s): administrative records data; experimental data; survey data

Collection Notes: For additional information on the Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trial study, please visit the MDRC website.

Methodology

Response Rate: Outcome data were collected for nearly all students in each RCT. Typically, fewer than 1 percent of students who were randomly assigned were "dropped" from an RCT due to, for example, a student withdrawing their consent to collect outcome data. See the RCT-Level Database for the number of students randomly assigned in each RCT and the number of students in the analytic sample, and see the Codebook and User's Guide for details on missing data.

Sampling: Sampling varies by RCT, see the RCT-Level Database for more information.

Data Source: The data were collected from four data sources:

Baseline: Baseline student demographic data (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, etc.) were gathered, either via a survey administered to students upon joining the study (but prior to random assignment) or from study colleges' administrative records;
College Transcript: Student transcript data (e.g., enrollment, credits attempted, credits earned, GPA) were provided by the study colleges or state higher education agencies;
College Credential Attainment: Student credential attainment data were provided by the study colleges or state higher education agencies;
National Student Clearinghouse: Student enrollment and credential attainment data were provided by the National Student Clearinghouse via their StudentTracker database. This includes enrollment and credential attainment data at colleges beyond the colleges where the study took place.

Collection Mode(s): on-site questionnaire; record abstracts; web-based survey

Scales: Various scales were used. See the Codebook for details.

Weights: The dataset includes a variable that indicates each student's probability of being assigned to the program group (special care needs to be taken in multi-arm trials). This variable can be used to create weights to account for differences in the probability of assignment to the program both within and between studies.

Unit(s) of Observation: School, Student

Geographic Unit: College campus

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Published Versions

V3 [2025-12-03]

V1 [2025-11-25]

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