High-stakes national testing, gender and school stress in Europe – A difference-in-difference analysis

Björn Högberg () and Daniel Horn
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Björn Högberg: Department of Social Work, Umea University, Sweden Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research (CEDAR), Umea University, Sweden

No 2111, CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

Abstract: Outcomes related to the wellbeing of students are increasingly being recognized as valuable objectives for education systems. In this study, we ask if high-stakes testing affects school-related stress among students and if there are gender differences in these effects. We combine macro-level data on high-stakes testing with survey data on more than 300,000 students aged 10-16 years in 31 European countries, from three waves (2002, 2006 and 2010) of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. With variation in high-stakes testing across countries, years and grade levels, we use a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences (DD) design for identification of causal effects. We find that high-stakes testing increases self-reported school-related stress by almost 10 % of a standard deviation. This is primarily driven by a strong effect for girls, meaning that high-stakes testing increases the gender gap in school-related stress. The results are robust to a range of sensitivity analyses.

Keywords: high-stakes testing; stress; gender; quasi experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I21 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2021-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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