Webinar: Rethinking Research on Books at Home: Using Photos to Study the Impact of Home Libraries on Children's Academic Achievement (17/09/24)
Webinar: Rethinking Research on Books at Home: Using Photos to Study the Impact of Home Libraries on Children's Academic Achievement (17/09/24)
Webinar: Rethinking Research on Books at Home: Using Photos to Study the Impact of Home Libraries on Children's Academic Achievement (17/09/24)
September 17th, 14:30h (CET)
Presenters:
Patricia Iglesias
Patricia is a researcher in the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology
(RECSM), and a doctoral candidate in Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Her dissertation, advised by Dr. Melanie Revilla, deals with the measurement opportunities for
surveys that emerge with the use of mobile devices. In particular, Patricia´s research focuses on
the capture of images to replace or complement traditional text answers given by respondents.
Her thesis is part of the project ``New opportunities to enhance or extend (mobile) web survey
data and get better insights´´ funded by the European Research Council.
Anna Volodina
Anna is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Educational Quality Improvement at
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. She received her PhD in psychology from the
University of Kiel, Germany. Her research focuses on the assessment and development of
(academic) language proficiency, school success, school transitions, and socioeconomic
inequalities in child development.
Birgit Heppt
Birgit is a professor for empirical educational research in the school context at TU Dortmund
University, Germany. She received her PhD and habilitation in psychology from Humboldt-
Universität zu Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on the diagnostics, promotion and
development of (academic) language proficiency in monolingual and multilingual learners,
teachers’ professional development for language support, and immigration-related inequalities
in student achievement.
Abstract:
The number of books at home is a common question in social science surveys because it helps estimate cultural and/or socioeconomic capital. However, the typical questions implemented, usually with preset intervals, present several limitations: lack of granularity and accuracy, social desirability bias, and no information on the types of books. These limitations could be overcome by using a different method: asking for photos of the books at home. In this webinar, a study implemented in the Netquest opt-in panel among parents of primary school children in Spain in June 2023 will be presented. The survey asked respondents to provide information about the books at home using both conventional questions (radio buttons and open-ended numeric responses) and photos.
In the first part of this webinar, Patricia Iglesias will present the study, and discuss how respondents of the online survey engaged when asked to provide photos of their books, examining their preferences, levels of participation, and evaluations of these questions. Additionally, Patricia will show results about the quality of the photos and the information extracted from them.
In the second part of the webinar, Anna and Birgit will present findings on the relations between the number of books (i.e., parents’ books and children’s books) and student achievement in Spanish and math as measured in grades. In particular, their analyses will shed light on the role of the home literacy environment as a potential mediator of the relation between the number of books and children’s achievement. Taking advantage of the unique dataset provided by the WEB DATA OPP project, findings based on conventional questions will be cross-validated using findings based on photos of the number of books at home.