Methodological Advances in Cross-National Surveys of Educational Achievement (2002) / Chapter Skim
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6. Measuring Family Background in International Studies of Education: Conceptual Issues and Methodological Challenges
6. Measuring Family Background in International Studies of Education: Conceptual Issues and Methodological Challenges
Pages 150-197
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From page 150... ...
Specifically, I focus on several surveys conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) : the Six Subject Study, the First and Second International Mathematics Studies, the Second International Science Study, and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study.
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Based on an assessment of these surveys, I offer recommendations for future international studies of educational achievement to consider in the conceptualization and measurement of family background. These include ways to replicate the successes and avoid the pitfalls of prior conceptualizations of family background, as well as ways to expand the measurement of family background to better account for the multidimensional influences and processes of families that have been found to be related directly to children's academic success.
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From page 152... ...
FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES: WHAT DO WE KNOW? Although socioeconomic status has always been at the core of the concept of family background, over time, the concept has expanded to include other aspects of families such as family structure, parental in
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From page 153... ...
In the classic study, The American Occupational Structure, Blau and Duncan (1967) present a basic model of the stratification process in which father's education and occupational status explain son's educational attainment, and all three variables, in turn, explain son's occupational attainment.
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For example, although the impact of family background factors is often a central concern in the research on educational attainment, much of the research on educational achievement is concerned with the effects of school factors, curriculum, or pedagogy; family background receives secondary consideration or is treated merely as a control variable. This is partly due to a longstanding preoccupation with finding "school effects" in response to early studies, such as the Coleman Report (Coleman et al., 1966)
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Here I briefly discuss the major methods and findings of these two interrelated lines of work: research on educational attainment and research on educational achievement. Research on Educational Attainment Building on the foundation laid by status attainment research in the United States, much research has examined the role of social origins in determining educational and occupational status and mobility in a range of countries.
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156 MEASURING FAMILY BACKGROUND IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES TABLE 6-1 International Studies of the Relationship Between Family Socioeconomic Status and Educational Outcomes Panel A: Attainment Study Country Measures of Family Socioeconomic Status Outcome Hansen & Hailer, Costa Rica 1973 Kerckhoff, 1974 Great Britain Currie, 1977 Uganda Occupational status, consumption status (index of parental education, house construction, and household possessions) Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Attains Attains Attains Cochrane & Thailand Father's education, mother's education, Enrollme Jamison, 1982 land ownership Attains Simkus & Hungary Father's occupation Attains Andorka, 1982 Behrman & Nicaragua Father's education, mother's education, Attains Wolfe, 1984 number of siblings, mother present Mukweso, Zaire Father's education, father's occupational Attains Papagiannis, status, index of consumption goods & Milton, 1984 Whyte & Parrish, China Father's education, father's occupational Attainme 1984 status Robinson & France Father's education, father's class Attainme Gamier, 1985 Smith & Cheung, Philippines Father's education, father's occupational Attains 1986 status Jamison & Nepal Father's education, father's literacy, father's Enrollme Lockheed, 1987 modernity, caste, household landholdings King & Lillard, Malaysia Father's education, mother's education Attains 1987 Pong & Post, Hong Kong Father's occupational status, mother's Attains 1991 education Lin & Bian, 1991 China Father's education, father's occupational Attains status Paterson, 1991 Scotland Father's occupation, mother's education., Attains household composition Shavit & Pierce, Israel Mother's education, father's education, Attains 1991 father's occupational status Stevenson & Japan Father's education, mother's education, Universit Baker, 1992 family income
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tonal Attainment Positive effects on attainment tonal Attainment Positive effects on attainment ~on, Enrollment Education vars positive on enrollment Attainment Indirect (through aspirations) on attainment Attainmenta Positive effect on attainment ~on, Attainment Positive effects on attainment; stronger effect of it mother's ed.
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158 MEASURING FAMILY BACKGROUND IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES TABLE 6-1 Continued Study Country Measures of Family Socioeconomic Status Outcome Hout, Raftery, & Bell, 1993 Blossfeld, 1993 De Graaf & Ganzeboom, 1993 Jonsson, 1993 Kerckhoff & Trott, 1993 Cobalti & Schizzerotto, 1993 Buchmann, Charles, & Sacchi, 1993 Tsai & Chin, 1993 Treiman & Yamaguchi, 1993 Mateju, 1993 Szelenyi & Aschaffenburg, 1993 Heyns & Bialecki, 1993 Shavit, 1993 Lillard & Willis, 1994 Fuller, Singer, & Keiley, 1995 Gerber & Hout, 1995 United States Germany Netherlands Sweden England Wales Italy Switzerland Taiwan Japan Czechoslovakia Hungary Poland Israel Malaysia Botswana Soviet Russia Father's education, father's occupational status, mother's education Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status, mother's education Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's occupational status Father's education, father's earnings, mother's education Mother's education, mother's employment status, senior male's employment status, household quality and possessions Parents' education, occupational status of main income earner in household Attains Attains Attains Attains Attains Attains Attains Attains Attainme Attains Attains Attains Attains Attains Enrollme Attains
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Mother's education significantly related to dropout; status, no effects of other variables s tus of Attainmenta Positive effects on attainment continues
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Cooksey, 1981 Cameroon Mother's and father's education, National mother's and father's occupation, perform home amenities (running water, electricity, toilet, refrigerator, cooker) Niles, 1981 Sri Lanka Family SES (index of father's Achiever occupation, father's education, mother's education, family income)
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Positive effect Modest positive effect for students living with parents; no effect for those living with relatives Positive effect on on performance Achievement Positive effect Science achievement Positive effect, but smaller than school effects, especially in poorer countries continues
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mother's education, family income) , father's class status Lockheed & SIMS Thailand Father's occupation, mother's Math act Longford, 1991 education, home use of four function calculator, home language Zuzovsky & SISS Israel Family SES (index of father's Science a Aitkin, 1991 occupation, mother's education, household composition)
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father's class status income) , anguage rtion, Math achievement Positive effects Science achievement Positive effect but varies by school Math achievement Positive effect Math achievement Used as a control to model effect of mixed versus single-sex schools
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of the International Labor Office that will likely be used extensively in future research. Although most prior research has relied on paternal occupational status in constructing this measure, recent empirical evidence indicates that mother's occupational status has a strong impact on educational achievement (Dronkers, 1989)
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, these scales have facilitated international comparisons of educational systems and educational stratification. Developing reliable measures of family wealth or income in studies of educational attainment has been more complicated than developing measures of parental education or occupational status because it is very difficult to get high response rates on income questions, and the accuracy of responses is often suspect.
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From page 166... ...
First, as the last column of Table 6-1 shows, virtually all studies find that socioeconomic status has a substantial impact on educational attainment across a wide range of contexts. Second, father's education usually is found to be a stronger determinant than occupational status or mother's education, although the latter measures are also usually important.
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Some critics have questioned the adequacy of the measurement of family background in studies of achievement, which generally has been less systematic than that in research on educational attainment. Specifically, numerous school effects studies have used inadequate or inappropriate controls for family background.
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Only a few studies have utilized multilevel models to examine school effects in international research, and their results are quite interesting. In contrast to previous research utilizing the production function approach, these studies find greater effects of family background than school factors on educational achievement in Zimbabwe (Riddell, 1989)
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From page 169... ...
Over time the definition of family background has grown increasingly complex, as substantial research has found that family structure, parental involvement, educational resources in the home, and family social and cultural capital often have independent influences, net of socioeconomic status, on children's educational outcomes. Family Structure Substantial research demonstrates that features of family structure, such as the number of children or the presence of one versus two parents in the household, have ramifications for educational outcomes.
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Family Social and Cultural Capital In addition to human capital (parental education, occupational status) and financial capital (wealth)
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in the home (Teachman, 1987~. Several studies have found that cultural capital, measured as student or parental participation in and preferences for such activities, has significant positive effects on educational attainment (De Graaf, 1986; DiMaggio 1982~.
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In addition to identifying this fundamental relationship, research has detailed some of the nuances and variations in this relationship across societies. Moreover, significant progress has been made in understanding how family background matters, how family structure intervenes in the relationship between SES and educational outcomes, and the mechanisms by which parents are able to transmit social status to their children via social and cultural capital.
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How well have large-scale international surveys of educational achievement measured the central components of family background? How could these measures be improved in future studies?
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Table 6-3 provides an overview of the five IEA studies and PISA and their coverage of family background in three broad domains: family socioeconomic status, family structure, and family social and cultural capital. The social and cultural capital domain is further subdivided into educational resources, parental involvement, cultural capital, and minority and residential status.
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In terms of occupational status, early studies focused on father's occupation in a format that asked for job title and activities. In the First International Mathematics Study, these responses were coded according to a common occupational classification scale for all countries (Husen, 1967, Vol.
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International Mother's educations siblings Books Check sp Science Study Father's occupations Student's Daily newspaper Encourag (IEA 1973) birth order Ask abort Second Father's educations Abacus Help wit: International Mother's educations Slide rule Parental Mathematics Father's occupation" Four-function math Study (IEA 1985)
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Home language Number of years in country Born in country? (student, mother, father)
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SIMS was the first study to record both mother's and father's occupational status, and used wording that allowed the student to answer the question for either mother/father or female/ male guardian. TIMSS differed markedly from prior studies in that it did not include questions on parental occupation.
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lems in gathering parental occupational status noted in prior IEA surveys raised questions about the feasibility of gathering reliable and usable data on parental occupation in TIMSS (Larry Suter, personal communication, September 11, 2000~. Indeed the challenges of collecting wealth and occupational status are well known.
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Such concerns, along with knowledge that several participating countries would not allow questions on parental occupation and wealth, likely led to the decision to exclude questions regarding parental occupational status from TIMSS. Thus the measurement of socioeconomic status was limited to two components: parental education and home possessions.
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Instead, the researchers used the "number of books in the home" measure as a proxy variable; as in the United States, this variable apparently had a much lower rate of nonresponse in European countries. Researchers Boe and May at the University of Pennsylvania are working to develop an index for socioeconomic status using TIMSS data on household possessions.
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From page 182... ...
Some studies did not include any measures of family structure, and worse yet, TIMSS included questions on household configuration in such a way that the elements of family structure likely most important for educational outcomes cannot be definitively determined. Students were asked to indicate (yes/no)
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From page 183... ...
Many of the flaws, such as those in the measurement of parental education and occupation, were addressed and improved in subsequent surveys. Recent surveys have been more cognizant of the multidimensional influences of family life and, in contrast to prior surveys, have incorporated questions regarding family cultural capital, home language, and immigrant status.
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Although the general picture is one of progress, in hindsight it is also apparent that some inconsistencies in data collection might have been avoided. Most notably, these are the lack of parents' occupational status and the weaknesses of the family structure data in the TIMSS survey.
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Finally, it appears that the data from IEA studies have been underutilized in terms of the third goal of comparing the distribution of educational achievement within and across societies. Much more energy has been devoted to comparing nations in terms of average achievement than to comparing nations in terms of the dispersion of math and science achievement scores or other educational outcomes.
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The accurate examination of the distribution of educational outcomes requires that we measure the social conditions, especially family background, across which such outcomes are distributed. Undoubtedly, large-scale international surveys have contributed much to understanding the effects of family background on educational outcomes, the impact of school effects net of family effects on educational achievement, and the determinants of unequal educational opportunities and outcomes within and across societies.
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population group mean ~ Country mean significantly lower - _ than U.S. population group mean 187 FIGURE 6-1 Family wealth and science achievement: Science total scores; upper grade, Population 2; 1995.
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2. Measures of parental education and occupational status are core components of family background that should be incorporated, when possible, into future surveys.
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Thus in the areas where knowledge is weakest, namely the mapping of cross-cultural variations in the impact of family structure and social/ cultural capital on educational outcomes, these surveys have an especially large contribution to make. Therefore, family structure and social/ cultural capital should be incorporated consistently as aspects of family background.
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These are the social influences at large and home background in particular, on the one hand, and the key factors operating in the school situation on the other hand. Careful consideration and measurement of family background factors can help to ensure that future surveys continue to provide detailed and comprehensive data with which to address longstanding questions regarding children's learning processes and educational achievement throughout the world.
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Comparative Education Review, 9, 468481. Beaton, A., Mullis, I., Martin, M., Gonzalez, E., Smith, T., & Kelly, D
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(2000~. Parental cultural capital and educational attainment in the Netherlands: A refinement of the cultural perspective.
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(1996~. Internationally comparable measures of occupational status for the 1988 international standard classification of occupations.
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(1990~. Cultural capital, student achievement, and educational reproduction: The case of Greece.
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Comparative Education Review, 25, 431441. Lareau, A
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Comparative Education Review, 18,157-163. Postlethwaite, T
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(1987~. Family background, educational resources and educational attainment.
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