University of Oslo Workshops June 29-30 Conference July 1-3 ...

elationship is referred to in the literature as a socioeconomic gradient because it is gradual
and increases across the range of SES. Willms (2002, 2003) has developed a framework
for studying socioeconomic gradients which has been applied in several national and
international assessment studies of student achievement. The present article seeks to extend
the socioeconomic gradient framework to IEA studies. It uses PIRLS 2006 data to evaluate
ten hypotheses about socioeconomic gradients in reading performance as an illustration of
the potential benefits of adopting this framework. Hypotheses are evaluated with two-level
and three-level hierarchical linear models (HLM). The results help to understand how
achievement disparities related to family background are configured at the within- and
between-country level.
Keywords: socioeconomic status (SES); hierarchical linear models (HLM); PIRLS 2006
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