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Six Subject Survey 1970

The Six Subject Survey (SSS70) included the following subjects Science, Reading, Literature, English as a Foreign Language, French as a Foreign Language and Civic Eduaction.

Background

The Data Bank covering the Six Subject Study consists of some quarter of a billion pieces of information which have been entered onto 10 different types of merged files and cover all the items and scores obtained in the subject areas that have been investigated. Each student has been assigned the responses pertaining to his school. This information was obtained from the questionnaire completed by the school principal. The information on teaching was obtained from the teacher questionnaires. The responses by the teachers on a particular stage have been aggregated to the level of the school. For each type of merged file a codebook has been prepared as follows:

Science, Reading and Literature (Population I, 10-year-olds)
Science, Reading and Literature (Population II, 14-year-olds)
Science, Reading and Literature (Population IV, students in the pre-university grade)
English as a Foreign Language (Population II)
English as a Foreign Language (Population IV)
French as a Foreign Language (Population II)
French as a Foreign Language (Population IV)
Civic Eduaction (Population I)
Civic Eduaction (Population II)
Civic Eduaction (Population IV)

Documentation

Technical Report

Peaker, Gilbert. F. (1975). An Empirical Study of Education in Twenty-One Countries VIII: A Technical Report (available on external source (ERIC)

Bloom, Benjamin. S. (1969) Cross-National Study of Educational Attainment Stage I of the I.E.A. investigation in six subject areas (Vol. 1) (pdf downloadable from external site - ERIC)

Cross-National Study of Educational Attainment
Stage I of the I.E.A. investigation in six subject areas (Vol.2) (pdf downloadable from external site - ERIC)

Cross-National Study of Educational Attainment
Stage I of the I.E.A. investigation in six subject areas (Vol.2, Booklet 5) (pdf downloadable from external site - ERIC)

Stage 2
Codebook - Pop I/Pop II/ Pop IV
Codebook. Population 1. Student - Stage 2. M2001 (pdf 1.4 MB)
Codebook. Population 2. Student - stage 2. M2002 (pdf 2 MB)
Codebook. Population 4. Student - stage 2. M2004 (pdf 2 MB)

Codebook. Population 1, 2 and 4. School - stage 2. S2000 (pdf 1.5 MB)
Codebook. Population 1, 2 and 4. Teacher - stage 2. T2000 (pdf 1.5 MB)
Codebook. Population 1, 2 and 4. Teacher attitude items - stage 2. TA000 (pdf)

Word knowledge. List of anchore items (pdf)

Stage 3
Codebook
Civic - Pop I/Pop II/ Pop IV
Codebook. Population 1. Student. Civic - stage 3. M001 (pdf 1.5 MB)
Codebook. Population 2. Student. Civic - stage 3. MC002 (pdf 2 MB)
Codebook. Population 4. Student. Civic - stage 3. MC004 (pdf 2 MB)

English as foreign language - Pop II/ Pop IV
Codebook. Population 2. Student. English as foreign language - stage 3. ME002 (pdf 1 MB)
Codebook. Population 4. Student. English as foreign language - stage 3. ME004 (pdf 1 MB)

French as foreign language - Pop II/ Pop IV
Codebook. Population 2. Student. French as foreign language - stage 3. MF002 (pdf 1 MB)
Codebook. Population 4. Student. French as foreign language - stage 3. MF004 (pdf 1 MB)

Codebook - school and teacher - Pop I/Pop II/ Pop IV
Codebook. Population 1, 2 and 4. School - stage 3. S3000 (pdf 1.5 MB)
Codebook. Population 1, 2 and 4. Teacher - stage 3. T3000 (pdf 1 MB)
IEA - Memorandum (1974) (pdf 5 MB)

Passow, A.H., Noah, H.J. Eckstein, M. A. & Mallea, J. R. (1976). An Empirical Comparative Study of Twenty-One Educational Systems VII.

Walker, D.A. (1976). The IEA Six-Subject Survey : An Empirical Study of Education in Twenty-One Countries IX.

Sampling Design

Summary of The Sampling Design

The specified populations were sampled in all the participating countries except India and Thailand. In India the study was limited to the six states in which Hindi is the language of instruction, and students in English-speaking private schools were excluded. In Thailand the study excluded the disturbed border areas.
Two stage sampling, with the selction of schools as the first stage, was used everywhere except in the United States and Iran, where districts were selected as the first stage.
Schools were stratified by size, sex, type and region, and it was recommended that (a) the overall sampling fraction for students should be kept constant, and (b) subject to (a) the number of students per school in the samples should be about 30, with a minimum of 100 schools.
The main difficulty experienced by National Centers in carrying out their designs was that many schools drawn by the sampling procedure declined to take part in the study. When this happended replacements were drawn from the same stratum, in some cases several times, until a consenting school was reached, but sometimes no replacement could be made. The risk of bias was reduced, yet plainly not altogether avoided, by making replacements from the same stratum.
The percentage of loss varied from stratum to stratum, but the balance between strata was restored by giving each student a stratum weight. Three quarters of the weights lay in the range from 0.8 to 1.4 with 7% exceeding 2.0, and 2% falling below 0.3. The more extreme values all relate to very small strata in countries where the number of strata was large. Altogether the samples contained about 10 000 schools, 50 000 teachers and 250 000 students.
Design-effects for the analyses between students were calculated by dividing seven of the samples each into ten subsamples, with the division following the sampling structure, replicating the calculation of the regression equations on each of the corresponding complementary samples, and comparing the resulting estimates. This evidence was combined with the evidence from the Mathematics Study in 1967, and suggested that appropriate values for DEFF were 2.4 for criterion means, 1.6 for correlations, and 1.4 for regression coefficients.

Peaker, Gilbert. F. (1975) An Empirical Study of Education in Twenty-One Countries: A Technical Report, p. 49.