Bias from the use of mean-based methods on test scores

Kristian Koerselman

No 1/2011, Working Paper Series from Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research

Abstract: Economists regularly regress IQ scores or achievement test scores on covariates, for example to evaluate educational policy. These test scores are ordinal measures, and their distributions can take an arbitrary shape, even though they are often constructed to look normal. The ordinality of test scores makes the use of mean-based methods such as OLS is inappropriate: estimates are not robust to changes in test score estimation assumptions and methods. I simulate the magnitude of robustness problems, and show that in practice, problems with mean-based regression of normally distributed test scores are small. Even so, test score distributions with more exotic shapes will need to be transformed before use.

Keywords: dmissible statistics; test scores; educational achievement; item response theory; IQ; PISA. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C40 I20 I21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2011-01-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sofi.su.se/content/1/c6/03/09/74/WP11no1.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://www.sofi.su.se/content/1/c6/03/09/74/WP11no1.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.sofi.su.se/content/1/c6/03/09/74/WP11no1.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2011_001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research SOFI, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Daniel Rossetti ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).