IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/43644.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Non-response biases in surveys of schoolchildren: the case of the English Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) samples

Author

Listed:
  • Micklewright, John
  • Schnepf, Sylke
  • Skinner, Chris J.

Abstract

We analyse response patterns to an important survey of schoolchildren, exploiting rich auxiliary information on respondents' and non-respondents' cognitive ability that is correlated both with response and the learning achievement that the survey aims to measure. The survey is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which sets response thresholds in an attempt to control the quality of data. We analyse the case of England for 2000, when response rates were deemed sufficiently high by the organizers of the survey to publish the results, and 2003, when response rates were a little lower and deemed of sufficient concern for the results not to be published. We construct weights that account for the pattern of non-response by using two methods: propensity scores and the generalized regression estimator. There is clear evidence of biases, but there is no indication that the slightly higher response rates in 2000 were associated with higher quality data. This underlines the danger of using response rate thresholds as a guide to quality of data.

Suggested Citation

  • Micklewright, John & Schnepf, Sylke & Skinner, Chris J., 2012. "Non-response biases in surveys of schoolchildren: the case of the English Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) samples," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 43644, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:43644
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/43644/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Martin Grančay, 2020. "COVID-19 and Central European Tourism: The Competitiveness of Slovak Tourist Guides," Central European Business Review, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2020(5), pages 81-98.
    2. Gabriele B. Durrant & Sylke V. Schnepf, 2018. "Which schools and pupils respond to educational achievement surveys?: a focus on the English Programme for International Student Assessment sample," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 181(4), pages 1057-1075, October.
    3. Jakubowski, Maciej & Pokropek, Artur, 2015. "Reading achievement progress across countries," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 77-88.
    4. Lisa Meehan & Gail Pacheco & Thomas Schober, 2023. "Basic Reading and Mathematics Skills and the Labour Market Outcomes of Young People: Evidence from PISA and Linked Administrative Data," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 99(327), pages 473-491, December.
    5. John Jerrim & Anna Vignoles & Ross Finnie, 2012. "University access for disadvantaged children: A comparison across English speaking countries," DoQSS Working Papers 12-11, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    6. Daniel K. Lew & Amber Himes-Cornell & Jean Lee, 2015. "Weighting and Imputation for Missing Data in a Cost and Earnings Fishery Survey," Marine Resource Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(2), pages 219-230.
    7. Micklewright, John & Schnepf, Sylke V. & Silva, Pedro N., 2012. "Peer effects and measurement error: The impact of sampling variation in school survey data (evidence from PISA)," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1136-1142.
    8. Rutherford, Matthew W. & O’Boyle, Ernest H. & Miao, Chao & Goering, Daniel & Coombs, Joseph E., 2017. "Do response rates matter in entrepreneurship research?," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 8(C), pages 93-98.
    9. Laura Zieger & John Jerrim & Jake Anders & Nikki Shure, 2020. "Conditioning: How background variables can influence PISA scores," CEPEO Working Paper Series 20-09, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised Apr 2020.
    10. Brick J. Michael, 2013. "Unit Nonresponse and Weighting Adjustments: A Critical Review," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 29(3), pages 329-353, June.
    11. Dan Hedlin, 2020. "Is there a 'safe area' where the nonresponse rate has only a modest effect on bias despite non‐ignorable nonresponse?," International Statistical Review, International Statistical Institute, vol. 88(3), pages 642-657, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    (PISA); bias; data linkage; non-response; Programme for International Student Assessment; school survey;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:43644. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.