Is computer availability at home causally related to reading achievement in grade 4? A longitudinal difference in differences approach to IEA data from 1991 to 2006

• Published in: Large-scale assessments in education Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 1 - 19
• Main Authors: Rosén, Monica, Gustafsson, Jan-Eric
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.12.2016; Springer; Springer Nature B.V; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Academic Achievement; Access to Computers; Achievement Tests; Assessment; Causal inference; Causal inferences with cross-sectional large scale assessment data; Cognitive Ability; Cognitive Tests; Computer Use; Control Groups; Correlation; Cross Cultural Studies; Difference in differences; Education; Educational Policy and Politics; Educational Sciences; Error of Measurement; Family Environment; Foreign Countries; Gender Differences; Grade 4; Home computer use; Humanities; International Assessment; Law; Learning Activities; Longitudinal Studies; Measurement; Pedagogik; Pedagogy; Questionnaires; Reading Achievement; Reading literacy; Reading Tests; Regression (Statistics); Socioeconomic Status; Statistics for Social Sciences; Student Attitudes; Testing and Evaluation; Utbildningsvetenskap; Greece; New Zealand; Sweden; Singapore; Hungary; United States; Italy; Slovenia; Iceland; Causal inference; Home computer use; Difference in differences; Reading literacy
• ISSN: 2196-0739; 2196-0739
• DOI: 10.1186/s40536-016-0020-8

Research on effects of home computer use on children’s development of cognitive abilities and skills has yielded conflicting results, with some studies showing positive effects, others no effects, and yet others negative effects. These studies have typically used non-experimental designs and one of the main reasons for the conflicting results is that studies differ with respect to how well they control for selection bias in comparisons of children with different amounts of computer use. The current study takes advantage of data from international comparative studies of educational achievement and uses the trend design of these studies to conduct longitudinal analyses at the country level. This allows for a difference in differences approach which effectively controls for within-country selection bias, time-invariant country-level omitted variables, and random errors of measurement in the independent and dependent variables. The empirical investigations are based on data from the IEA 10-Year Trend Study and the PIRLS 2001 and 2006 studies. For these studies, information about frequency of home computer use is available in the student questionnaire. The main analytical approach employed in the paper is regression estimation based on micro-data, with fixed country effects and cluster-robust standard-errors. This approach allows estimation of main effects of home computer use and interaction effects with student characteristics (gender and socio-economic status). For both data sets negative effects of home computer use on achievement are found. Results are discussed in substantive and methodological terms, focusing particularly on possible threats to valid causal inference, such as omitted variables that are not time invariant.