Cargando…

Higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: Evidence and implications

The number of books at home is commonly used as a proxy for socioeconomic status in educational studies. While both parents’ and students’ reports of the number of books at home are relatively strong predictors of student achievement, they often disagree with each other. When interpreting findings o...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Eriksson, Kimmo, Lindvall, Jannika, Helenius, Ola, Ryve, Andreas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9623014/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36329734
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1026387
_version_ 1784821898019864576
author Eriksson, Kimmo
Lindvall, Jannika
Helenius, Ola
Ryve, Andreas
author_facet Eriksson, Kimmo
Lindvall, Jannika
Helenius, Ola
Ryve, Andreas
author_sort Eriksson, Kimmo
collection PubMed
description The number of books at home is commonly used as a proxy for socioeconomic status in educational studies. While both parents’ and students’ reports of the number of books at home are relatively strong predictors of student achievement, they often disagree with each other. When interpreting findings of analyses that measure socioeconomic status using books at home, it is important to understand how findings may be biased by the imperfect reliability of the data. For example, it was recently suggested that especially low-achieving students tend to underestimate the number of books at home, so that use of such data would lead researchers to overestimate the association between books at home and achievement. Here we take a closer look at how students’ and parents’ reports of the number of books at home relate to literacy among fourth grade students, by analyzing data from more than 250,000 students in 47 countries participating in 2011 PIRLS. Contrary to prior claims, we find more downward bias in estimates of books at home among high-achieving students than among low-achieving students, but unsystematic errors appear to be larger among low-achieving students. This holds within almost every country. It also holds between countries, that is, errors in estimates of books at home are larger in low-achieving countries. This has implications for studies of the association between books at home and achievement: the strength of the association will generally be underestimated, and this problem is exacerbated in low-achieving countries and among low-achieving students.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9623014
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-96230142022-11-02 Higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: Evidence and implications Eriksson, Kimmo Lindvall, Jannika Helenius, Ola Ryve, Andreas Front Psychol Psychology The number of books at home is commonly used as a proxy for socioeconomic status in educational studies. While both parents’ and students’ reports of the number of books at home are relatively strong predictors of student achievement, they often disagree with each other. When interpreting findings of analyses that measure socioeconomic status using books at home, it is important to understand how findings may be biased by the imperfect reliability of the data. For example, it was recently suggested that especially low-achieving students tend to underestimate the number of books at home, so that use of such data would lead researchers to overestimate the association between books at home and achievement. Here we take a closer look at how students’ and parents’ reports of the number of books at home relate to literacy among fourth grade students, by analyzing data from more than 250,000 students in 47 countries participating in 2011 PIRLS. Contrary to prior claims, we find more downward bias in estimates of books at home among high-achieving students than among low-achieving students, but unsystematic errors appear to be larger among low-achieving students. This holds within almost every country. It also holds between countries, that is, errors in estimates of books at home are larger in low-achieving countries. This has implications for studies of the association between books at home and achievement: the strength of the association will generally be underestimated, and this problem is exacerbated in low-achieving countries and among low-achieving students. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9623014/ /pubmed/36329734 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1026387 Text en Copyright © 2022 Eriksson, Lindvall, Helenius and Ryve. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Eriksson, Kimmo
Lindvall, Jannika
Helenius, Ola
Ryve, Andreas
Higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: Evidence and implications
title Higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: Evidence and implications
title_full Higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: Evidence and implications
title_fullStr Higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: Evidence and implications
title_full_unstemmed Higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: Evidence and implications
title_short Higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: Evidence and implications
title_sort higher-achieving children are better at estimating the number of books at home: evidence and implications
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9623014/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36329734
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1026387
work_keys_str_mv AT erikssonkimmo higherachievingchildrenarebetteratestimatingthenumberofbooksathomeevidenceandimplications
AT lindvalljannika higherachievingchildrenarebetteratestimatingthenumberofbooksathomeevidenceandimplications
AT heleniusola higherachievingchildrenarebetteratestimatingthenumberofbooksathomeevidenceandimplications
AT ryveandreas higherachievingchildrenarebetteratestimatingthenumberofbooksathomeevidenceandimplications