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Estimating Social and Ethnic Inequality in School Surveys: Biases from Child Misreporting and Parent Nonresponse

Engzell, Per; Jonsson, Jan O; (2015) Estimating Social and Ethnic Inequality in School Surveys: Biases from Child Misreporting and Parent Nonresponse. European Sociological Review , 31 (3) pp. 312-325. 10.1093/esr/jcv005. Green open access

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Abstract

We study the biases that arise in estimates of social inequalities in children’s cognitive ability test scores due to (i) children’s misreporting of socio-economic origin and (ii) parents’ nonresponse. Unlike most previous studies, we are able to draw on linked register data with high reliability and almost no missingness and thereby jointly consider the impact of measurement error and nonresponse. Using data on 14-year-olds (n = 18,716) from a new survey conducted in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries), we find that child reports on parental occupation are well aligned with parents’ reports in all countries, but reports on parental education less so. This leads to underestimation of socio-economic disparities when child reports of education are used, but not occupation. Selective nonresponse among parents turns out to be a real problem, resulting in similar underestimation. We also investigate conditional estimates of immigrant–non-immigrant disparities, which are surprisingly little affected by measurement error or nonresponse in socio-economic control variables. We conclude that school-based surveys on teenagers are well advised to include questions on parental occupation, while the costs for carrying out parental questionnaires may outweigh the gains.

Type: Article
Title: Estimating Social and Ethnic Inequality in School Surveys: Biases from Child Misreporting and Parent Nonresponse
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/esr/jcv005
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcv005
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10168748
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