@Connelly2019

(2019) - Roxanne Connelly, Vernon Gayle

Journal: British Journal of Sociology
Link::
DOI:: 10.1111/1468-4446.12343
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Tags:: #paper #NCDS #Attainment #CognitiveAbility #SocialClass
Cite Key:: [@Connelly2019]

Abstract

The ‘Flynn effect’ describes the substantial and long-standing increase in average cognitive ability test scores, which has been observed in numerous psychological studies. Flynn makes an appeal for researchers to move beyond psychology’s standard disciplinary boundaries and to consider sociological contexts, in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of cognitive inequalities. In this article we respond to this appeal and investigate social class inequalities in general cognitive ability test scores over time. We analyse data from the National Child Development Study (1958) and the British Cohort Study (1970). These two British birth cohorts are suitable nationally representative large-scale data resources for studying inequalities in general cognitive ability.

Notes

“The ‘Flynn effect’ describes the substantial and long-standing increase in average cognitive ability test scores, which has been observed in numerous psychological studies” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 1)

“We observe a large parental social class effect, net of parental education and gender in both cohorts. The overall finding is that large social class divisions in cognitive ability can be observed when children are still at primary school, and similar patterns are observed in each cohort” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 1)

“general cognitive ability in childhood, which is understood to be socially stratified from a very young age (Feinstein, 2003; Sullivan et al., 2013; Cunha and Heckman, 2009; Duncan et al., 1998; Gottfried et al., 2003)” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 2)

“Neisser et al. (1995: 77) describes cognitive ability as the ‘ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought.’ Cognitive ability tests are well validated measures of individual differences of cognitive capability (Deary et al., 2007; Sternberg et al., 2001). T” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 2)

“he National Child Development Study (NCDS) follows the lives of babies born in England, Scotland and Wales from the 3rd to the 9th of March 1958 (see Power and Elliott, 2006). The British Cohort Study (BCS) follows babies born in England, Scotland and Wales from the 5th to the 11th of April 19703” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 4)

“In the NCDS and the BCS cohort members completed general ability tests at age 11 and 10 respectively. The general ability test in the NCDS comprised of 40 verbal and 40 non-verbal items (see Shepherd, 2012). The general ability test in the BCS comprised of four sub-scales from the British Ability Scales, word definition, word similarities, recall of digits and matrices (see Parsons, 2014)” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 5)

“Longitudinal studies typically have missing data (see Hawkes and Plewis, 2006; Plewis et al., 2004; Mostafa and Wiggins, 2014; Mostafa and Wiggins, 2015). In” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 8)

“The size of the longitudinal sample” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 8)

“Our results below use multiple imputation and inverse probability weights in combination in order to provide improved adjustments in the presence of missing data (see Little and Rubin, 2014; Seaman et al., 2012). Full details of the complete multiple imputation process and sensitivity analyses are provided in the online supplement.” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 9)

“We take the trailblazing step of rendering the complete workflow accessible and reproducible within a Jupyter notebook5 (Kluyver et al., 2016).” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 9)

“Overall children from more occupationally advantaged social classes perform better on the general cognitive ability test. The negative social class gradient, and the differences between social class categories, may reflect the instability, and the economic and social strain that results from belonging to the more disadvantaged social class groups (Layte, 2017; Elder, 1994; Conger and Conger, 2002). These differences may also reflect other characteristics of parents jobs, such as complexity (see Parcel and Menaghan, 1994).” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 15)

“We speculate that social class differences in cultural values, parenting styles and family activities may also play a role in reproducing inequalities (see Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Ermisch, 2008; Kiernan and Mensah, 2011; Lareau, 2011; Washbrook, 2011; Vincent and Ball, 2007; Sullivan et al., 2013).” (Connelly and Gayle, 2019, p. 17)