Bivariate multilevel models for the analysis of mathematics and reading pupils' achievements

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Code:
18/2015
Title:
Bivariate multilevel models for the analysis of mathematics and reading pupils' achievements
Date:
Thursday 9th April 2015
Author(s):
Masci, C,; Ieva, F.; Agasisti, T.; Paganoni, A.M.
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Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to identify a relationship between pupils' mathematics and reading test scores and the characteristics of students themselves, stratifying for classes, schools and geographical areas. The dataset of interest contains detailed information about more than 500,000 students at the first year of junior secondary school in the year 2012/2013, provided by the Italian Institute for the Evaluation of Educational System (INVALSI). The innovation of this work is in the use of multivariate models, in which the outcome variable is bivariate: reading and mathematics achievements. Using the bivariate outcome enables researchers to analyze the correlations between achievement levels in the two fields and to estimate statistically significant school and class effects after adjusting for pupil's characteristics. The statistical model employed here explicates account for the potential covariance between the two topics, and at the same time it allows the school effect to vary among them. The results show that while for most cases the direction of school's effect is coherent for reading and mathematics (i.e. positive/negative), there are cases where internal school factors lead to differential performances in the two fields.
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Masci, C., Ieva, F., Agasisti, T., & M. Paganoni, A. (2016). Bivariate multilevel models for the analysis of mathematics and reading pupils' achievements. Journal of Applied Statistics, 1-22. doi: 10.1080/02664763.2016.1201799 (2016)