In spring 2007, the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) was administered for the first time. The major domain for this assessment was reading and the minor domains were mathematics and science. The accompanying questionnaires for students, teachers, and school administrators were designed to provide jurisdictions with contextual information that would contribute to the interpretation of performance results. A questionnaire-development group composed of educators and research experts from selected jurisdictions developed a framework to ensure that the questions asked of students, teachers, and school administrators were consistent with predetermined theorical constructs or important research questions.
The main focus of the PCAP-13 2007: Contextual Report on Student Achievement in Reading is on questionnaire results, specifically, on variables associated with achievement. The report is divided into chapters corresponding to major clusters of variables, which, according to previous research and theory, may influence achievement.
In each chapter, questionnaire results are first presented descriptively, by jurisdiction and language. First, the reading performance levels and mean reading scores are compared for students across categories on each of the variables of interest. The mean comparisons are used to determine whether the variable is significantly associated with achievement. Second, the relationships between questionnaire variables and achievement are examined through a multi-level regression-modelling process.
Significant results include the following:
- Having a mother with a higher level of education and having more books at home are both associated with higher performance.
- The mean scores for students in private schools are significantly higher than those for public-school students.
- Greater enjoyment of reading and more positive perception of being a good reader are both strongly related to reading performance..
- Students who learn to read at a younger age perform better in reading than those who learn to read later.
- Students whose parents/guardians encouraged them more in reading when they were younger experience increased reading performance.
- Students whose schools are in larger communities perform better than those whose schools are located in smaller communities.