Evaluation Through Follow-up

The wednesday began with a warm welcome from our scientific leader Alli Klapp, followed by Jan-Eric Gustafsson's insightful look-back on UGU's history. From Karolinska Institutet, our guests Patrik Magnusson presented to the audience about the Swedish Twin Registry and its structure, and Peter Allebeck who talked about his research with UGU data and how our data has contributed to a better understanding of the link between cognitive ability and suicide and schizophrenia among teenagers.

Erica Lindahl from the Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU) talked about how UGU data has been able to lay the foundation for several research projects, where the importance of, for example, age-integrated classes has been investigated. From Stockholm University, Hugo Westerlund talked about the REWHARD infrastructure with as many as nine nodes! And Anne Boschini, who investigates the connection between cognitive ability and fatherhood, invited to a very interesting lecture, which characterized an innovative way of using UGU data.

The last speaker of the first day, Mikael Hjerm, talked about the European Social Survey (ESS) and how this large-scale database has contributed to increased knowledge about gender differences in the labour market. At the mingle afterwards, new collaborations and exchanges of ideas were created among doctoral students and researchers.

From Umeå University, we had speakers Hanna Eklöf and Björn Högberg, who began the second and final day of the conference with presentations on students' increased stress and psychosomatic problems - topics that the researchers with the help of our longitudinal data have been able to investigate more closely.

Hans Grönqvist from Linnaeus University introduced us to yet another unique area of use for UGU. His ongoing study examines the media's portrayal of vulnerable areas and how students who live there experience their everyday lives, as a result. Thea Klapp, a PhD student at IPS, talked about one of her published papers that examined the relationship between high-achieving students' self-assessment and mediocre math teaching (the Big Fish Little Pond effect). Kajsa Yang Hansen, professor at IPS, presented an article where the effect of interest levels for different subjects was measured among resilient students. Before our panel discussion, Björn Halleröd from the University of Gothenburg talked about the challenges faced by large-scale research databases, and our scientific leader Alli Klapp summed up the days and emphasized the importance of this milestone - an inspiring conference that marked 63 years of Evaluation Through Follow-up (UGU).

The increased school-related stress among young people is a current topic that researchers from different disciplines have investigated. Researcher Björn Högberg from Umeå University examines, among other things, pupils' well-being in school.

In this study, Högberg examines the increased school-related stress based on four hypotheses: What is the relationship between the following factors and the increased school-related stress? The following survey questions have been used to answer the research question;

The survey questions 

1. "Tests" - "How often [do you have tests] in your class?"
2. "Ambition for further education" - "Are you planning to start studying at university or college?"
3. "Academic difficulties" - Three variants of the sub-question "... I have a hard time keeping up with lessons." in combination with questions about self-assessment in Swedish, English and math.
4. "Isolation" - The sub-question "... I feel bullied by other students."

Result

1. "Tests" - The amount of hours spent on homework was less in 2020 compared to 2003.
2. "Ambition for further education" - A larger proportion of students wanted to continue studying after upper secondary school in 2020, compared to the proportion of students in 2003.
3. "Academic difficulties" - Self-reported homework difficulty has increased since 2003, while academic self-assessment has remained stable overtime.
4. "Isolation" - More students have felt excluded or bullied in 2020, compared to 2003.

Högberg also takes into account the school reforms that were implemented in the first half of the 2010s. The reforms included higher assessment requirements, but also less personal support, which affected students in need of it.

The reforms can partly explain the increased stress among students in relation to the number of tests. In terms of the ambition for further education, the proportion of positively disposed students was higher in the spring of 2020, compared with the spring of 2003. This may be due to the increased demand for further education in the labour market. This development may also have contributed to a dilemma, where both low- and high-achieving students experience increased stress linked to their performance in school.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected students' experience of the academic difficulty and whether they feel isolated. While the school reforms may explain the increased academic difficulty between the years 2003 and 2020, the restrictions of the pandemic combined with the reforms may have reduced students' social interactions, and thus increased their isolation.

More information for those who are included in the selection can be found under the following link:

Principals with classes in the sample  

Teachers with students in the sample

Parents with children in the sample

Information clips for students

Thank you for contributing to the research on Swedish schools!