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Even though all tests are in the fields ‘Mathematics’ and ‘Science’, they do not necessarily
test the same cognitive skill: The IEA tests are related to common elements of school
curricula across countries while IAEP is geared towards the curriculum in USA building on
the national testing procedures developed by the National Assessment of Education Progress
NAEP. The OECD PISA test has a more real-world approach and claims to assess the skills
that are considered to be essential for full participation in the society. These differences do
not, however, seem to be very important with respect to measured student performance. For
example, the correlation coefficient between the test results for the 18 countries participating
both in TIMSS 2003 and PISA 2003 is 0.94.6

Table 1. Data sources description

Year

Test
organization

Acronym

Test subjects

Test age
or grade

Countries

Data source

1980-81

IEA

SIMS

Mathematics

13 years

3 in 1980

14 in 1981

Lee and Barro (1997)

Travers and Westbury (1989)

11 in 1983

1983-85

IEA

SISS

Science

14 years

11 in 1984

1 in 1985

Postlethwaite and Wiley (1992)

1990-91

IAEP

IAEP

Mathematics
and Science

13 years

2 in 1990

17 in 1991

Lee and Barro (1997)

1994-95

IEA

TIMSS

Mathematics
and Science

Grade 8

4 in 1994

36 in 1995

timss.bc.edu/

1998-99

IEA

TIMSS-repeat

Mathematics
and Science

Grade 8

6 in 1998

31 in 1999

timss.bc.edu/

2000-02

OECD

PISA 2000

Mathematics
and Science

15 years

32 in 2000

9 in 2002

www.pisa.oecd.org

2002-03

IEA

TIMSS 2003

Mathematics
and Science

Grade 8

7 in 2002

38 in 2003

timss.bc.edu/

2003

OECD

PISA 2003

Mathematics
and Science

15 years

40 in 2003

www.pisa.oecd.org

Note. For some countries separate scores are reported for different parts of the country. We have calculated mean
country averages by using population as weight. IEA (except the 1983/84 test) and IAEP tests are conducted in
the fall in the southern hemisphere and in the spring in the northern hemisphere. PISA 2000 originally only
included five non-OECD countries, but nine additionally non-OECD countries conducted the same test in 2002.

Recently, it has become common to report national averages based on Items Response Theory
which weights the different questions by their difficulty (“Warm estimates”, Warm, 1989),
and standardizes the scores such that the average across all students across countries
participating is 500 with standard deviation of 100. Particularly the PISA studies employ this

6 The correlation coefficient between the average Science and Mathematics score in TIMSS-repeat 1999 and
PISA 2000 is 0.87 and for IAEP 1991 and TIMSS 1995 the correlation coefficient is 0.80. The correlation
coefficients are calculated using the adjusted test score described below. Interestingly, as can be seen from
Figure 2 below, USA has its poorest performance in the IAEP test that was based on the US curriculum.



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