The overall aim of this study was to examine the different self-reported students' socioeconomic status (SES) measures in the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in comparison to national SES measures obtained from Swedish official registers. A further aim was to determine if the same conclusions could be drawn if different student…

Using data collected from 4329 students in the 2015 iteration of the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), we explore two mediators for the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and TIMSS-results in mathematics among Norwegian fifth graders. First, we explore how the students' motivation and self-concept mediate the…

Due to the fixed school start in Norway in August of the calendar year of students' sixth birthday, the age span in one class is up to twelve months. This can impact academic performance both in the early years and later. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between birth month and mathematics performance by paying attention to the…

This study offers curriculum developers, teachers, and science education researchers a fine-grained profile on strengths and weaknesses in specific science domains and topics. The study involved a representative sample of 3844 Norwegian pupils in grade 8. Their responses on 216 TIMSS items in 18 topics from 4 science domains were modelled in a…

The aim is to describe the development of achievement in compulsory school in the Nordic countries from the 1960s. The study relies on published results concerning literacy and numeracy from the international large-scale assessments between 1964 and 2012. Among others, the following conclusions are drawn: (1) for most countries, a small but…

The present paper aims to discuss how data from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) can be utilized and combined, even with other existing data sources, in order to monitor educational outcomes and study the effectiveness of educational systems. We consider different purposes of linking data, namely, extending outcomes measures,…

Over time international large-scale assessments have grown in terms of number of studies, cycles, and participating countries, many of which are a heterogeneous mix of economies, languages, cultures, and geography. This heterogeneity has meaningful consequences for comparably measuring both achievement and non-achievement constructs, such as…