Primary and Secondary Effects in Class Differentials in Educational Attainment
Why is this work in the frame?
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
No Canadian affiliation. An affiliation-only frame — the usual design — would never have seen this work. It is one of the works that make the case for inverting the frame.
Machine scores (provisional)
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
- Teacher spread
- 0.313 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
- Validation status
score_only:v0-immature-baseline· verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it
Abstract
In this article we start from Boudon's important, but still surprisingly neglected, distinction between `primary' and `secondary' effects in the creation of class differentials in educational attainment. Primary effects are all those, whether of a genetic or socio-cultural kind, that are expressed via the association between children's class backgrounds and their actual levels of academic performance. Secondary effects are those that are expressed via the educational choices that children from differing class backgrounds make within the range of choice that their previous performance allows them. We apply a method introduced by Erikson and Jonsson to represent the relationship between primary and secondary effects in analysing class differentials in one crucial transition within the English and Welsh educational system: that which children make at around age 16 and which determines whether or not they will pursue the higher-level academic qualifications — A-levels — that are usually required for university entry. We then use a development of this method that we have earlier proposed in order to produce quantitative estimates of the relative importance of primary and secondary effects as they operate within this transition. We show that secondary effects reinforce primary effects to a substantial extent, accounting for at least one quarter, and possibly up to one-half, of class differentials as measured by odds ratios. In conclusion, we consider some theoretical and policy implications of our findings.
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The record
- Venue
- Acta Sociologica
- Topic
- Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Field
- Social Sciences
- Canadian institutions
- —
- Funders
- Economic and Social Research Council
- Keywords
- Class (philosophy)OddsEducational attainmentDemographic economicsPsychologyQuarter (Canadian coin)WelshDevelopmental psychologyEconomicsEconomic growthMathematicsStatisticsComputer scienceLogistic regressionGeography
- Has abstract in OpenAlex
- yes