John P. Keeves

Gender differences in the relationship between depression and suicidal ideation in young adolescents

Objective: This study examined the risk relationship between depressive symptomatology and suicidal ideation for young adolescent males and females. Method: A large cohort of students in their first year of high school completed the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and the Adolescent Suicide Questionnaire. The risk relationship between depressive symptomatology and suicidal ideation was modelled using non-parametric kernel-smoothing techniques. Results: Suicidal ideation was more frequently reported by females compared with males which was partly explained by females having higher mean depression scores. At moderate levels of depression females also had a significantly higher risk of suicidal ideation compared with males and this increased risk contributed to the overall higher levels of female ideation. Conclusions: The risk relationship between depressive symptomatology and suicidal ideation is different for young adolescent males and females. The results indicate that moderate levels of depressive symptomatology can be associated with suicidal ideation (especially among young females) and that for these young people a suicide risk assessment is required.

Implementation quality of whole‐school mental health promotion and students’ academic performance

Background This paper argues for giving explicit attention to the quality of implementation of school-wide mental health promotions and examines the impact of implementation quality on academic performance in a major Australian mental health initiative. Method Hierarchical linear modelling was used to investigate change in standardised academic performance across the 2-year implementation of a mental health initiative in 96 Australian primary (or elementary) schools that was focused on improving student social-emotional competencies. Results After controlling for differences in socioeconomic background, a significant positive relationship existed between quality of implementation and academic performance. The difference between students in high- and low-implementing schools was equivalent to a difference in academic performance of up to 6 months of schooling. Key Practitioner Message Given the known relationship between student academic achievement and mental health, many nations are mounting school-based mental health interventions: however, the quality of program implementation remains a concern The Australian KidsMatter primary school mental health intervention enabled the development of an Implementation Index allowing schools to be grouped into low- to high- implementing schools The quality of implementation of KidsMatter appears to be positively associated with the level of student academic achievement, equivalent to 6 months more schooling by Year 7, over and above any influence of socioeconomic background

Longitudinal Research Methods

Publisher Summary This chapter explains the longitudinal research methods. Longitudinal research studies, that is, investigations conducted over time, are of growing importance in the social and the behavioral sciences and, in particular, in the field of education. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the problems associated with the design of longitudinal research studies and the strategies used in the analysis of the data collected, as well as with the sources of bias that could invalidate the findings. Educational research is concerned with the processes of change, and the study of change requires that observations are made for at least two points in time. It is important to recognize that, while longitudinal methods are frequently contrasted with cross-sectional methods, a detailed comparison between the two methods is largely inappropriate because constancy and change can only be examined through repeated observation, which is the key characteristic of the longitudinal method. In longitudinal research, the costs of carrying out the processes of data collection and maintaining contact with the sample under survey are so great that, in general, there is little to be gained by collecting data on only one criterion measure. Longitudinal research has an important role to play in this regard within the field of educational research.

Evaluation and Accountability in Asian and Pacific Countries

The use of both evaluation and accountability in education systems has been of long standing, although the ways in which they are used have changed markedly over the past century. Where schools and universities are run as private, fee paying organisations, the clients, who are the students and their parents, must make their own judgments of the effectiveness and value of the education provided. However, where schools and universities are paid for out of public funds the need arises to evaluate and account for the spending of public monies. With the expansion across the world of the education systems in each country, province and municipality, the call for evaluation and accountability of those systems has increased, because of the substantial and rising expenditures involved. Over the past 100 years, not only has the size of the school-aged population grown markedly, but the demand has also grown, initially for universal primary education, subsequently for widespread secondary and technical education, and more recently for greatly increased provision of higher education and training in technology and commerce. The costs of providing these services are substantial and often relatively larger in those countries that can least afford to provide such services, but have the greatest need. This article considers the nature of both evaluation and accountability and examines how they are practised and developed in the region.

Patterns of Science Achievement: International Comparisons

This chapter examines the patterns of gender differences in science achievement, attitudes and participation across several countries and over time. It argues that the patterns observed are the effects of societal forces and educational practices in schools that engender differences between boys and girls in attitudes, aspirations, expectations and levels of achievement. It demonstrates that the size of the observed differences between the sexes can be reduced and further that gradual changes are taking place, to varying degrees, in different countries. The issues are no longer whether greater equality between the sexes can be achieved, but where and how balance should be maintained in terms of principles of equity and social justice.

Learning Across the Adult Lifespan

The past two centuries have not only seen rapid growth in the population of the world, and especially in those countries in the Asia-Pacific region, but they have also seen a marked growth worldwide in the provision for, and participation in, formal education. During the latter half of the nineteenth century the establishment of free and compulsory primary level education was strongly endorsed and in many countries enforced to achieve universal participation. During the first half of the twentieth century secondary education was firmly established. This was commonly in schools that selected students for different types of education, namely, academic, vocational or general. Then, with the growth of secondary education many countries moved towards a more comprehensive type of schooling, with a participation rate of over 80 per cent of each age-cohort remaining at school to the end of the secondary phase. In the latter half of the twentieth century tertiary education was expanded through a marked increase in the number of universities to which students had access, together with a large increase in the number of technical colleges at which students received vocational education and training. Some countries have now achieved levels of participation of around 40 per cent of the age cohort enrolled in universities, and up to 30 per cent of the age cohort enrolled in technical colleges. Within the Asia-Pacific region, wide disparities exist between countries in the extent of student participation in the three phases of education, ranging from very high levels in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Australia to the very low levels found in the countries of South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. Evidence obtained from research studies indicates that, in general, the extent of educational provision is dependent on the wealth of a country and in turn, the extent of provision has an influence on the further increase in wealth of a country (see Educational Expenditure and Participation in East Asia and Australia, Higher Education and Development, Financing Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific Region). Countries with low levels of participation face decisions in the expansion of their education systems about whether to give priority to the primary, secondary or tertiary phases.

Issues in the Analysis of Data from Natural Classroom Settings.

Three problems which arise in the analysis of data from natural classroom settings are examined and the effects of the use of different statistical procedures are illustrated with data derived from the Home Environment and School Study in Canberra in 1969. These three problems involve: (1) the appropriate procedures to be used in the analysis of data when prior performance influences teacher and classroom behaviours and treatment conditions, (2) the appropriate units of analysis when data associated with schools, classrooms, and students within classrooms are analysed, and (3) the effects on statistical inference of using samples that involve clustered groups of students in classes or schools rather than simple random samples. These three problems are commonly ignored and can give rise to gross errors in the interpretation of the findings of school and classroom research studies.

Sex and Gender Differences in Educational Outcomes

The Asia-Pacific region includes countries with a wide range of ethnic and racial groups and with a great variety of cultural traditions. Within these traditions, women and men may have very different roles in the societies in which they live, work and play. However, the expansion of educational services within the region during the twentieth century has raised the issues of whether there should be equality of educational opportunities for girls and boys and whether equality of educational outcomes should be expected between the sexes. The proper handling of the biological and psychological differences between boys and girls remains a challenging problem for education in all countries. Consequently, it is necessary to consider whether boys and girls have different innate abilities, have different capacities to read or to calculate, to memorize or to formulate and to express their ideas. Moreover, it is important to consider whether they have different emotional drives to participate or to succeed and need different types of preparation for the different tasks required of them in their adult lives. It is also inappropriate to assume that research conducted in North America, which often dominates the debate in educational settings, necessarily applies outside the particular culture in which that research was conducted. This article is primarily concerned with differences between the sexes in educational outcomes. Where possible it considers changes that have occurred in outcomes over time and whether there are differences in these outcomes between countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The existence of change or differences over time and between countries provides evidence that such differences as are observed are societally based. In addition, in situations where the societies are themselves changing, it must be asked whether further change in the differences between the sexes in educational outcomes might be expected.

Educational expansion and equality of opportunity: Evidence from studies conducted by IEA in ten countries in 1970–71 and 1983–84

Abstract This chapter examines the relationship between the educational expansion that has occurred in ten countries, and whether there is evidence that expansion has resulted in greater equality of opportunity for students from different social backgrounds. The chapter draws on data collected in the First and Second IEA Science Studies, conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in 1970–1971 and 1983–1984 respectively. The ten countries involved are: Australia, England, Finland, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Thailand and the United States. Problems are encountered in the measurement of both social background and participation. The chapter examines the possibility of using several variables which assess home background and are shown to be related to the educational outcome of science achievement. A ratio involving membership of major occupational groups, is subsequently employed to provide an index of social selectivity or social bias. This index is used to show that educational expansion has, in general, resulted in the anticipated decrease in social bias and in the provision of greater equality of educational opportunity across different social class groups.

Changing strategies of analysis: Towards multilevel models

With the availability of electronic computers to analyse large bodies of data in the early 1960s the strategy that was used initially to examine the relative contributions of home and school to the performance of students employed the student as the unit of analysis (e.g., Husen, 1967). Alternatively, the Equality of Educational Opportunity survey in the United States in the mid-1960s (Coleman et al., 1966) used schools as the unit of analysis, only to be followed by extensive debate as to how best to analyze such bodies of data. However, in examining the data from the Plowden National Survey conducted in 1964 in England, Peaker (1967) employed the complementary analyses of between schools and pooled between students within schools as the most appropriate strategy of analysis. During the next decade many studies were carried out in different parts of the world using one or more of these approaches to investigate the effects of schools, teachers and classrooms on student learning with continuing debate on units and levels of analysis (e.g., Coleman, 1975). A seminal article by Cronbach and Webb (1975) not only endorsed the view that between group and within group regressions should be examined separately in school and classroom studies but also drew attention to the danger of obtaining misleading findings if the variability in class-by-class regression slopes was not taken into consideration. This led Burstein, Miller and Linn (1981) to undertake a reanalysis of data collected in the IEA Science Study (Comber & Keeves, 1973) in which mean school science achievement test score and the within school slope of science achievement on verbal ability were taken as measures of science achievement outcomes for a school. These three outcome measures were then regressed on the aggregated background and school level explanatory variables with schools as the unit of analysis using ordinary least squares regression procedures. Other research workers sought to investigate the use of within group slopes as indices of group outcomes (e.g., Larkin & Keeves, 1984). There was, however, growing, recognition of the timely warning by Pedhazur (1982) with respect to the analysis of data which were pooled across schools or classrooms in