The relationship between young people’s Economic, Cultural and Social status (ECSS) and learning outcomes is a common and well-documented subject in educational research (see for example, Broer, Bai, & Fonseca, 2019; Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010; Hattie, 2009; O’Connell, 2019; Yang-Hansen, 2008). Furthermore, associations of children’s and young people’s ECSS with a variety of outcomes in a range of other areas and stages of life have been extensively explored.
The growth of national, regional and international large‑scale assessments in education has furthered the use young people’s ECSS in quantitative research to investigate the relationship between ECSS and education outcomes (Broer et al., 2019; Lietz, Cresswell, Rust, & Adams, 2017; OECD, 2018). Thus, the results from comparative large-scale assessments have great potential to inform the development of strategies and policies to improve and ensure equity in education.
However, definitions and operationalisations of young people’s ECSS across different large-scale assessments are seldom consistent (Osses, Adams, & Schwantner, Forthcoming). These inconsistencies pose significant challenges for comparing results between large-scale assessments, and they limit the usability of findings in addressing policy issues concerning equity in education.
There is broad agreement in the literature, and in most large-scale assessments, on the essential components of ECSS and its operationalisation through key indicators of education, occupation and wealth (American Psychological Association [APA] Task Force on Socioeconomic Status, 2007; Bollen, Glanville, & Stecklov, 2001; Grusky, 2008; Hauser, 1994; Mueller & Parcel, 1981). However, inconsistencies occur in the components included and how each component is operationalised, which is limiting researchers’ capacity to a build a sound evidence base concerning educational outcomes and equity-related background factors.
The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the interpretations concerning equity in education vary when different indicators of ECSS are used for the same set of students and countries. We expect that findings provide evidence to foster discussion about the need of developing well-defined and consistent contextual indicators that allow policymakers to use findings for implementing actions to address policy issues of equity in education.
Data from PISA 2018 are used to assess variations in the relationship between student’s reading achievement and ECSS when two different indicators of this construct are used. The first indicator is the PISA Index of Economic, Social and Cultural Status. The second indicator is the TIMSS 2018 Index of Home Educational Resources (PISA-HER). We replicate the PISA analyses concerning the relationship between students’ ECSS and reading achievement for the PISA-ESCS and PISA-HER indicators and compare findings.
Our preliminary results indicate that both indicators – PISA-ESCS and PISA-HER, provide evidence of an existing relationship between reading achievement and student’s ECSS. For example, in OECD countries an average 12% and 14% of the variation in reading achievement is explained when using the PISA-ESCS indicator and the PISA-HER indicator, respectively. However, differences in the interpretation of equity in education are found when looking at individual countries. Among the 37 OECD countries participating in PISA 2018, 12 countries are classified as high achievers (above OECD average in reading performance) and equitable (below the OECD average variation in reading achievement explained by ECSS) when considering the PISA-ESCS indicator. Seven of these countries show low equity in education when the PISA-HER indicator is considered. Inconsistencies such as these emphasise the need for harmonising contextual indicators between studies to provide sound evidence for the design of policy actions aimed at improving equity in education.
