Increases in Student Pessimism toward School

 

Increases in Student Pessimism toward School (OECD PISA) [Preliminary]

This post is related to (but not a part of) the Youth Suicide Rise project.

Summary:

In nearly all of the 37 OECD countries surveyed by PISA, the portion of 15-year-old students disagreeing that 'trying hard at school is important' has increased between 2012 and 2018, doubling the OECD average. The portions of students disagreeing that trying hard can help with getting a job or with getting into college has similarly increased. Only in Japan has the average portion of disagreeing students declined.

PISA Student Attitudes toward School Items

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) included a set of three questions, in 2012 and 2018, about student attitudes toward school:

Thinking about your school: to what extent do you agree with the following statements? Trying hard at school will help me get a good job.

Thinking about your school: to what extent do you agree with the following statements? Trying hard at school will help me get into a good college.

Thinking about your school: to what extent do you agree with the following statements? Trying hard at school is important.

with the possible answers being: Strongly disagree / Disagree / Agree / Strongly agree.

The survey was given to 15-year-old students in both 2012 and 2018 -- but not in 2015 -- in nearly every OECD country (37 out of the current 38 full members).

OECD Trends

The OECD average for students who disagreed that it is important to try hard at school has grown from 6% to 12%; for those who disagreed this will help them with jobs or college, the increase was from from 8% to 13% and from 6% to 11%, respectively.

The median changes among the 37 OECD countries were 78% 75% 86% per question in the order shown above. 

The average change on the three questions was at least a 3 percentage points increase (corresponding to a nearly 50% relative increase) in 31 nations -- in other words the changes were minor in only 6 of the 37 countries.

Country Trends

The largest (absolute) increases were in Chile, Lithuania and Latvia. The lowest increases were in Finland, Korea and Japan (the last one seeing a decrease).

Out of the 37 OECD countries, only three only three saw a decline on at least one of the three questions, and only Japan on more than one question.

U.S. Trend

In the U.S. the portion of disagreeing students increased by roughly 5 percentage points on each of the questions, but this resulted in considerable relative increases because the U.S. had very small numbers of disagreeing students in 2012 (roughly 5%, 1%, 3% for the questions as listed above).

No Trend in Strong Optimism

There is no clear international trend in strong optimism -- agreeing strongly that school is important: the median changes on the three questions for the prevalence of strongly agree answers are 0, -1, 1, with 0 median change of their average.

The changes in agreeing strongly, however, do correlate closely with changes in disagreeing:

The graph above shows prevalence changes for the three question totals, with Strong Optimism = strongly agree and Pessimism = disagree or strongly disagree.

These results suggest there two primary forces: influence A affects all attitudes while influence B affects only those with low or no optimism. Force A has no international trend while force B has a nearly universal declining trend.

Limitations

The data is aggregate per question, meaning we do not know, for example, how many students disagreed on all three questions.

WARNING: These data come from the PISA data explorer, which (inexplicably) returns only whole numbers. Care should be taken especially with interpreting relative change when the base rate is small and subject to both sampling error and rounding.

Discussion

The near universality of the increases in pessimist attitudes toward school is remarkable, given that it affects the vast majority of all OECD countries.

Some of the 2012 students were no doubt affected by the Great Recession a few years prior, but the more pessimist 2018 students experienced mostly a slow but steady economic recovery.

There are at least two other remarkably universal recent trends on PISA: increases in student alienation and decreases in student perception of parental support. Unlike optimism toward school, however, satisfaction with parental support has declined internationally at both levels (agree and strongly agree); and so did student disagreement with feeling lonely (both disagree and strongly disagree levels).

Explanations

One possibility is that public pessimism towards social institutions has grown, at least within OECD, and kids are affected by the attitudes of parents and other adults -- including teachers. This, however, does not easily explain why there is no international trend showing declines in strong optimism.

Another possibility is that there are institutional changes withing school systems across OECD that induce already struggling students toward greater pessimism -- but do not have much effect on other students. This could explain why there is no international trend showing declines in strong optimism.

Yet another possibility is that there are rising levels of psychological distress, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety, among teens across OECD that affect only a minority of students -- enough to create a trend in pessimistic students but not any trend in strongly optimistic students.

Smartphone proliferation and rising time spent online could, in turn, be the underlying reasons for such rising levels of psychological distress, per the Haidt & Twenge theory. It is unclear, however, why these would decrease both levels of satisfaction with parental support, and both levels of belonging in school (strong and regular), yet not both levels of optimism toward school.

To Do:

Analyze data at individual student level.

Redo without rounding, add confidence intervals.

Add non-OECD countries.

Data:

I will add a link to a data file soon.