The effects of school starting age and relative age effects (RAEs) have generated much interest from parents, teachers, policymakers, and educational researchers. Our 10-year longitudinal study is based on a nationally representative (N = 4,983) prospective sample from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The primary outcomes are results…

Much research shows academic self-concept and achievement are reciprocally related over time, based on traditional longitudinal data cross-lag-panel models (CLPM) supporting a reciprocal effects model (REM). However, recent research has challenged CLPM's appropriateness, arguing that CLPMs with random intercepts (RI-CLPMs) provide a more robust…

The Negative Year in School Effect (NYiSE) claims that grade-relative-to-age influences academic self-concept. Being young for your grade is associated with lower self-concept, whereas being old for your grade is associated with higher self-concept. We extend this research in several ways. First, we aim to improve causal claims for the NYiSE by…

Consistently with a priori predictions, school retention (repeating a year in school) had largely positive effects for a diverse range of 10 outcomes (e.g., math self-concept, self-efficacy, anxiety, relations with teachers, parents and peers, school grades, and standardized achievement test scores). The design, based on a large, representative…

In this paper, we develop an information distortion model (IDM) of social class differences in self-beliefs and values. The IDM combines psychological biases on frame-of-reference effects with sociological foci on ability stratification. This combination is hypothesized to lead to working-class children having more positive math self-beliefs and…

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model and dimensional comparison theory posit paradoxical relations between achievement (ACH) and self-concept (SC) in mathematics (M) and verbal (V) domains; ACH in each domain positively affects SC in the matching domain (e.g., MACH to MSC) but negatively in the nonmatching domain (e.g., MACH to…

The present investigation examined the content specificity of math and English anxieties, tested the generality of predictions from the internal/external (I/E) frame of reference model to anxiety responses, and studied sex differences in anxiety responses. Structural equation models, using LISREL, were fit to data from the High School and Beyond…

Previous research with the large, nationally representative High School and Beyond data has compared senior year achievement test scores for public and Catholic high school students after controlling for background variables and sophomore year test scores. These analyses, however, were based on traditional applications of multiple regression with…

Tests for mean differences on latent constructs using the LISREL approach to multigroup structural-equation modeling were demonstrated for High School and Beyond data concerning the sophomore cohort. Senior year achievement test scores for 3,700 public and 300 Catholic school students were compared after controlling for background and sophomore…

The self-serving effect (SSE), often depicted as a bias, is the tendency to accept responsibility for one's own successes but not one's own failures. Two studies of Australian fifth graders (n=226, n=559) were further analyzed to investigate individual differences in SSE. The Sydney Attribution Scale measured students' perceptions of the causes of…