Variables Associated with Students’ Science Achievement in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2009)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze some of the variables that affect Turkish students’ success inscience using data from the PISA 2009 student survey. The universe for the investigation comprised 15-year-oldTurkish students who were completing their compulsory education. The sample consisted of 4996 students whowere selected through stratified sampling from this universe. Missing data were examined before analysiscommenced and missing data were excluded from the analysis. The final sample comprised 4388 students.Independent t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple comparisons were used in accordance with thepurpose of the study. The results showed that there was a significant difference between students’ success inscience and a number of variables, namely, gender, school type, region, pre-school education, parents' educationlevel.