54.032 - Measurement of Socioeconomic Status for American Education Surveys

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Socioeconomic Status (SES) is a key construct in education surveys, in terms of predicting educational achievement, informing policy decisions, and relevance to education research. However, optimal measurement of SES remains elusive, with well-known problems with common SES measures. This symposium will review the current state of the field on measurement of SES for national large-scale educational surveys, evaluate the feasibility of measuring SES with student self-report questionnaires, introduce sophisticated modelling techniques applied to data from the American Community Survey to form novel and promising neighborhood SES measures, and finally demonstrate the utility of the novel SES measures in terms of explaining available variables in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, including subgroup differences in reading and mathematics proficiency.

Sub Unit

• Division D - Measurement and Research Methodologies / Division D - Section 1: Psychometrics, Measurement, and Assessment

Chair

• Paul A Jewsbury, Educational Testing Service

Papers

• Overview of Efforts to Develop a Measure of Socioeconomic Status for National Large-Scale Surveys - William Ward, U.S. Department of Education

• Accuracy of Student-Reported Socioeconomic Status: Results From the NAEP/Early Childhood Longitudinal Program—Kindergarten Linking Study - Paul A Jewsbury, Educational Testing Service; Laura Jerry, Educational Testing Service

• Leveraging Spatial Interpolation Methods to Predict Socioeconomic Status for Neighborhoods Without Boundaries - Laura Nixon, U.S. Census Bureau

• Utility of Spatially Interpolated Neighborhood Income Estimates for National Education Surveys - Paul A Jewsbury, Educational Testing Service; Yue Jia, Educational Testing Service; Laura Jerry, Educational Testing Service

Discussant

• Charles D Cowan, Analytic Focus