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Contents
- Abstract
- The Social Class Test Gap
- Conceptualization of Social Class
- The Role of Anxiety in Accounting for the Social Class Test Gap
- Income Inequality and the Social Class Test Gap
- The Psychology of Income Inequality
- Income Inequality in the School Environment
- Overview of the Studies
- Study 1: Parental Education, Income Inequality, and Mathematic Performance
- Method
- Participants
- Variables
- Parental Education
- Mathematics Performance
- Mathematics Anxiety
- Income Inequality
- Results
- Overview of the Multilevel Analysis Using Plausible Values
- Multilevel Models
- Control Variables
- Centering Decisions
- Plausible Values
- Effect Size
- Analyses
- H1: Social Class and Performance
- H2: Income Inequality, Social Class, and Performance
- Discussion
- Study 2: Culturally and Economically Based Family Social Class, Income Inequality, and Performance
- Method
- Participants
- Variables
- Social Class Indicators
- Parental Education (Culturally Based Social Class)
- Family Cultural Capital (Culturally Based Social Class)
- Family Economic Capital (Economically Based Social Class)
- Standardized Test Performance
- Anxiety
- Mathematics Anxiety
- Test Anxiety
- Income Inequality
- Results
- Overview of the Multilevel Analysis Using Plausible Values
- Analyses
- Replication of Study 1
- Distinguishing Cultural and Economic Capitals
- Discussion
- General Discussion
- Finding 1. Anxiety Mediates the Social Class Test Gap
- Finding 2. Income Inequality Moderates the Social Class Test Gap
- The Positive Interaction Between Income Inequality and Economic Capital
- The Negative Interaction Between Income Inequality and Cultural Capital
- Finding 3. An Unexpected Main Effect of Inequality on Anxiety
- Reflections on the Size of the Effects
- Limitations
- Cross-Sectional Design and Causality
- Perspectives on Measurement
- Educational Implications
- Conclusions
Figures and Tables
Abstract
We conducted three preregistered studies using the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to provide a worldwide estimation of the standardized test gap between students from lower and higher social classes. We investigated: (a) the degree to which academic anxiety contributes to this gap and (b) the role of country-level income inequality in widening this gap. In Study 1, we used PISA 2003 data (250,000+ students from 41 countries) and demonstrated that anxiety accounts for approximately one-fifth of the performance gap between students with less educated parents and those with more educated parents. Unexpectedly, the social class test gap was weaker in more unequal countries than in...
