socio-economic data item highest level of education data item A socio-economic data item that is about a person and their completion of at least some of the required courses of an education program, where the set of planned competencies to be acquired by completing that program, as a whole, are of a more advanced nature than the set of competencies acquired through any other educational program completed by the person. Colbie Reed Mathias Brochhausen Matt Diller Note that by 'more advanced nature' of the competencies, we do not mean merely having more knowledge, but rather a set of competencies / capabilities that enable the person to do things of a fundamentally different nature than before. This distinction is exemplified by the difference between a Masters and a PhD degree. The PhD has a key objective of enabling the person to function as an investigator in the domain, whereas a Masters does not. William R. Hogan This data item in a typical attribute-value system such as table, XML, JSON takes values like "secondary education", "Associate Degree", "Bachelor Degree", "High School", and so on. Also, note that we revised the definition in collaboration with our APRICOT project colleagues who noted that the individual need not have completed one of the education programs in a sequence, instead demonstrating competencies for admission to the highest level of eductation in some alternative way. For example, the highest level of education might be baccalaureate degree, but the individual did not graduate a secondary education program but instead got a General Educational Development (GED) certification / degree. highest level of education socio-economic data item