Abstract
Family is a fundamental determinant of children’s welfare outcomes, not only in terms of good or bad behaviour, but also in terms of child development, comprising emotional, social, and cognitive skills. Family structure is even more important in a developing country in which educational achievement tends to lag. Using a national sampling from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted in 2009 and 2012 in Thailand as a case study for a developing country, this paper quantifies impacts the effects of family structure on cognitive skills and learning performance among Thai students. The findings reveal that family structure, especially for those living with both father and mother, can positively affect the academic achievement of Thai students compared to those who do not live with both parents. Thus, strengthening family structures should be another necessary policy to could promote positive educational outcomes in this developing country.
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Notes
Ordinary National Educational Test (O-NET) is a test of basic education divided into six subject areas: Thai language, mathematics, sciences, social studies, religion and culture, and foreign languages (English). The test consists of writing and multiple-choice sections.
PISA was first conducted in 2000 and is conducted every 3 years. The latest assessment was in the year 2015, which is the sixth round of the assessments. The program involves students in 70 countries, 34 of which are members of the OECD and the rest non-member countries, including Thailand.
For the first stage, samples of 15-year-old students, who were studying at Grade 7 or higher, in schools all over Thailand, were randomly chosen. In the second stage, 15-year-old students in schools located in each region were randomly chosen to ensure that the data represented students all over the country and that the chances of being selected were equal for all students.
The reason for using data from these 2 years is that the previous surveys from previous years (2000, 2003, and 2006) do not contain a question on family structure of a student. Besides, data on assessment results of the year 2015 had not yet been released at the time of this writing.
PISA score in all the three areas, in this study, refers to plausible value as there are multiple sets of tests involved and each set does not equally assess competency in the three areas, making it improper to compare scores of each student. In response to this issue, the test scores were transformed into five probability values called “plausible values,” of which the average value was used for comparing students’ scores.
Supported by van de Werfhorst and Mijs (2010), who reviewed the comparative literature on the impact of national-level educational institutions on inequality in student achievement. Two types of institutions that characterize the educational system of a country were examined, namely, the system of school-type differentiation (between-school tracking) and the level of standardization (e.g., with regard to central examinations and school autonomy). He finds inequality in terms of dispersion of student test scores and inequality of opportunity by social background and race/ethnicity of students.
Due to missing data on family structure (living with parents), the number of observations decreases from 11,690 to 6343 observations. This missing data may reduce the representativeness of the sample and can therefore distort inferences about the population. Nevertheless, the remaining 6343 observations are still enough to ensure unbiased estimation.
A study conducted by Ghazarian and Buehler (2010) found that American children living with parents who argue excessively tend to have significantly lower educational achievement than children living with parents who do not argue excessively. However, nontraditional families that provide an environment that supports cognitive development can help children achieve their educational goals better than children living in traditional families that do not foster such an environment.
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Pholphirul, P., Teimtad, S. Living with parents and educational outcomes in developing countries: empirical evidence from PISA Thailand. J Pop Research 35, 87–105 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-017-9196-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-017-9196-1