ERIC Number: EJ1119754
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0969-594X
EISSN: N/A
Correcting for Sample Problems in PISA and the Improvement in Portuguese Students' Performance
Freitas, Pedro; Nunes, Luís Catela; Balcão Reis, Ana; Seabra, Carmo; Ferro, Adriana
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, v23 n4 p456-472 2016
The results of large-scale international assessments such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have attracted a considerable attention worldwide and are often used by policy-makers to support educational policies. To ensure that the published results represent the actual population, these surveys go through a thorough scrutiny to ensure their validity. One important issue that may affect the results is the occurrence of different participation rates across groups with heterogeneous average student scores. In this study, we illustrate how problems of representativeness of the samples may be corrected by the use of post-stratified weights. We use the case of Portugal, a country where we uncover a meaningful difference between the actual population and the PISA samples in terms of the distribution of students per grade and track of studies. We show that after post-stratification, the temporal evolution of the PISA scores is quite different from the one reported.
Descriptors: International Assessment, Student Characteristics, Weighted Scores, Evaluation Problems, Sampling, Cohort Analysis, Heterogeneous Grouping, Case Studies, Age Grade Placement, Instructional Program Divisions, Student Records, Robustness (Statistics), Test Validity, Test Reliability, Research Methodology, Foreign Countries, Achievement Tests, Secondary School Students
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Portugal
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Program for International Student Assessment
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A