From the questionnaires, we assessed various sociodemographic variables, including the respondents' current marital status (married, unmarried/divorced or widowed) and educational attainment (elementary, secondary or university).
15 Education was grouped by the level of attainment (elementary school, middle school, high school, university or higher) and the residential area was categorised to either urban area or non-urban area (town or country).
In this model some of the categories of the independent variables were combined into two-category variables: age (−80 years vs. 80+), educational attainment (no formal or elementary and lower secondary vs. higher secondary and higher), marital status (unmarried, widowed and divorced/separated vs. married), and urbanization level (average/weak/rural vs. very strong/strong).
The respondents were sorted into three categories of educational attainment: high school or less (elementary, junior high, or senior high school), two-year college or special training school, and university or higher (university or graduate school).
Boggs concludes the essay by making a persuasive case for the value of two-year and four-year institutions of higher education working together with elementary and secondary partners to improve educational attainment in the United States to set into place an educational continuum that more seamlessly bridges all educational levels.
SES was assessed with five measures: Educational attainment: Measured as 'no education or elementary school'intermediateate school'secondaryary education or more' including secondary school, vocational school or university.
Educational attainment was categorized as follows: no schooling, elementary school, middle school, high school, and college or post-graduate.
Their educational attainment distributed as follows: 10% had an elementary school or less education, 51% junior high school, 27% high school, and 12% college or higher.
For the education variable, the highest level of educational attainment was used and grouped into: "no education", "elementary level", and "secondary level or higher".
Topics include the economic return to secondary and postsecondary education, the quality of elementary and secondary education, the market for teachers, inequality in education attainment, and school choice.
