Factors Predicting Turkish Students’ Mathematics and Science Achievement in TIMSS 2019

Abstract

The study aims to investigate how confident in mathematics/science, amount of books in the home, gender, like being in school, and computer software predicted mathematics and science achievements of students in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019. The sample of the study consisted of 8th-grade Turkish students, 1784 students for mathematics, and 1776 students for science. Multiple linear regression was conducted by using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and International Database (IDB) Analyzer, which provides a way to combine five plausible values of achievement scores. The study results indicated that the amount of books in the home, like being in school, and students’ confident in mathematics/science significantly predicted mathematics and science achievements. Confident in mathematics/science contributed the most to predicting achievement among the variables after controlling for the other predictors.