As the Federal Government continues its push to increase the numbers of students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds going to university, new research shows that the current measure used to determine SES performs poorly when classifying individuals, as opposed to the regions they come from.
Released by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), Measuring the socioeconomic status of Australian youth, finds that the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), which looks at where people live, performs reasonably well when reporting the total participation in higher education but misclassifies almost 40% of individuals as being from high or low SES backgrounds.
Dr John Rice, Chief Researcher, NCVER said measuring SES is complex.
“SES is made up of many characteristics such as parental occupation, household income and wealth, family structure as well as the areas people live in,” Dr Rice said.
“Usually, this sort of detailed information about individuals is not available, so SES is measured indirectly through SEIFA.
“This means, for example, that a student of a wealthy farming family will be classified as being of low SES because the student’s home is in a less prosperous region, when in reality, that student and their family have significant financial and cultural resources.
“That is why NCVER’s researchers turned to the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) to create a measure of individual SES. LSAY provided them with data about people’s cultural and educational resources as well as parental education and occupation to produce a measure that more accurately reflects the socioeconomic status of individuals.
“This more sophisticated measure may assist governments to better direct funds aimed at helping disadvantaged people get to university.”
Copies of Measuring the socioeconomic status of Australian youth are available from www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2355.html
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