Diane Dancer

Student Involvement in Assessment: A Project Designed to Assess Class Participation Fairly and Reliably.

This article describes a project designed to ensure that class participation in a large introductory commercial law course is assessed fairly and reliably. The subjectivity often associated with this type of assessment is minimized by involving students in the specification of clear criteria and the assessment process as they were asked to assess themselves and their peers. Formative feedback is given mid‐way through the semester so that students have the opportunity to take remedial measures where necessary and teachers can reinforce positive behaviour. The data are analyzed to determine the relationships between the assessments given by the students, their peers and tutors. There is evidence of some gender bias in Week 13 that is not consistent with the final marks. Finally, the combining of the individual assessment of the criteria is shown to be a good estimate of the final class participation mark given by the tutors and the students.

Infant mortality and child nutrition in Bangladesh

The excess female infant mortality observed in South Asia has typically been attributed to gender discrimination in the intra-household allocation of food and medical care. However, studies on child nutrition find no evidence of gender differences. A natural explanation could be that in environments of high infant mortality of females, the surviving children are healthier, so that child nutrition cannot be studied independently of mortality. In this paper, we use data from the 2004 Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey to investigate if there are any gender differences in survival probabilities and whether this leads to differences in child nutrition. We argue the importance of establishing whether or not there exists a dependence relationship between the two random variables--infant mortality and child nutrition--and in order to detect this we employ a copula approach to model specification. The results suggest, for example, that while male children have a significantly lower likelihood of surviving their first year relative to female children, should they survive they have significantly better height-for-age Z-scores. From a policy perspective, household wealth and public health interventions such as vaccinations are found to be important predictors of better nutritional outcomes.

Maternal autonomy and child nutrition: Evidence from rural Nepal

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the main determinants of child nutrition in rural Nepal, focusing on the influential role of maternal autonomy. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses data from the 2006 Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) to estimate econometric models using OLS and logit techniques. The dependent variables are the two anthropometric measures of child weight-for-height (a measure of wasting) and height-for-age (a measure of stunting). Findings - No evidence was found of gender discrimination against the girl child in either of our nutritional measures. However, our results show that the explanatory variables have differential effects on male and female children. Estimation results show that maternal autonomy variables have a limited influence on child nutrition measures, but household wealth has a large positive impact on child nutrition, both short-term and long term. Originality/value - The large sample size and the range of questions available in our nationally representative dataset, allows us to explore the influence of household level social and economic factors on child nutrition. A study of the role of maternal decision-making power and control over assets on the nutritional status of children is an important issue in a developing country like Nepal, where health and education outcomes remain poor for large segments of the population.

Determinants of Schooling in Egypt: The Role of Gender and Rural/Urban Residence

In this paper, we examine if there are gender differences in schooling attainment and the extent to which these differences are exacerbated for rural children in Egypt. Using a nationally representative cross-sectional survey, our estimation results find strong support for the hypothesis that being male and living in urban areas significantly improves child schooling. We show that relative to a female child who is “never enrolled” in school, a male child is over twice as likely to be currently attending school, and over two-and-a-half times more likely to have some schooling. These positive effects are particularly strong for rural male children. There are also regional variations, with a child (male or female) living in Upper Rural Egypt having a significantly lower likelihood of being currently enrolled. Finally, our estimation results point to large positive effects of fathers education on the probability of current enrolment for all children. Mothers education, however, improves only the likelihood of current enrolment for female children, with no significant effect on male children.

Gender differences in intrahousehold schooling outcomes: the role of sibling characteristics and birth-order effects.

In this paper we examine the influence of gender, sibling characteristics and birth order on the schooling attainment of school‐age Egyptian children. We use multivariate analysis to simultaneously examine three different schooling outcomes of a child having ‘no schooling’, ‘less than the desired level of schooling’, and an ‘age‐appropriate level of schooling’. Estimation results show strong evidence of gender, birth order and sibling characteristics on schooling attainment, with female and rural children particularly disadvantaged. Interestingly, our results show adverse effects on the schooling outcomes of first‐born male children. Finally, we show that an improvement in parental education has large, positive and significant effects on the schooling attainment of children.

R-squared and prediction in regression with ordered quantitative response

Abstract This paper is concerned with the use of regression methods to predict values of a response variable when that variable is naturally ordered. An application to the prediction of student examination performance is provided and it is argued that, although individual scores are unlikely to be well predicted at the extremes of the range using the conditional mean, conditional on covariates, it is possible to usefully predict where an individual is likely to feature in the rank order of performance.

Maternal Education and Child Schooling Outcomes in Nepal

This paper uses a sample of school age children from the Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) to examine the relationship between maternal education and child schooling in Nepal. Taking advantage of the two-stage stratified sample design, we estimate a sample selection model controlling for cluster fixed effects. These results are then compared to OLS and Tobit models. Our analysis shows that being male significantly increases the likelihood of attending school and for those children attending school, it also affects the years of schooling. Parental education has a similarly positive effect on child school, but interestingly we find maternal education having a relatively greater effect on the schooling of girls. Our results also point to household wealth as having a positive effect on both the probability of schooling and the years of schooling in all our models, with the magnitude of these effects being similar for male and female children. Finally, a comparison of our results with a model ignoring cluster fixed effects produces results that are statistically different both in signs and in the levels of significance.

The Gender Issue Revisited: A Case Study of Student Performance in Economics and Econometrics

Using a sample of 696 first year students in an Australian university, we use a seemingly unrelated regression model and show that there are some very important differences between the key characteristics affecting performance in a first year course in economics and econometrics. Here the primary concern was a possible different gender affect in the two courses. The results indicate that the ability factors such as the TER, the mathematical ability and whether a student enrolls in a Commerce degree or another degree are important factors for differentiating success in economics and econometrics. The gender and age of a student--part of the socio-economic factors--are very different for the two courses. Of particular interest are the different effects of the gender variable in the two courses. Further, indicators of commitment such as attendance at tutorials, mostly attending lectures and motivation for enrolling in an economics related degree because the student took economics at school all clearly show differences.

A commentary and two responses to: ‘What are the effective public schools? Insights from New South Wales’ secondary schools using a stochastic frontier analysis with a panel dataset’:

This is a compilation of three items comprising first a commentary on “What are the effective public schools? Insights from New South Wales’ secondary schools using a stochastic frontier analysis with a panel dataset” (Diane Dancer & Vincent Blackburn, Australian Journal of Education, 61(2), 2017. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004944117713555) followed by two responses to that commentary. The commentary by Rob van den Honert examines whether an appropriate measure of efficiency has been used to interpret the results in this study. He also fields the question: ‘is using resources more efficiently more important than achieving superior educational outcomes? In the second item, Diane Dancer and Vincent Blackburn respond to Rob van den Honert’s commentary. The third item by Petra Lietz is a brief response to Rob van den Honert’s commentary.

What are the effective public schools? Insights from New South Wales’ secondary schools using a Stochastic Frontier Analysis with a panel dataset

Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis, this article examines the efficiency and effectiveness of financial inputs and demographic data for educational outputs as measured by the Year 12 results for New South Wales secondary schools using a panel dataset from 2005 to 2010. Effective schools, in these analyses, are those that have higher Year 12 results than expected given their students’ prior performance and socio-economic status as well as financial inputs. Results indicate that prior learning achievement in Year 10 has a large, significant and positive impact on the current Year 12 results. Using a quadrant method, for each school, the efficiency score and the median Year 12 result are plotted separately for each of the three regions across New South Wales and a further quadrant plot is presented for the four Metropolitan districts in Sydney. Overall 37.5 per cent of schools are efficient and effective schools and 30 per cent are neither efficient nor effective.