Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/237555 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
CERS-IE Working Papers No. CERS-IE WP - 2021/11
Publisher: 
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Budapest
Abstract: 
Outcomes related to the wellbeing of students are increasingly being recognized as valuable objectives for education systems. In this study, we ask if high-stakes testing affects school-related stress among students and if there are gender differences in these effects. We combine macro-level data on high-stakes testing with survey data on more than 300,000 students aged 10-16 years in 31 European countries, from three waves (2002, 2006 and 2010) of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. With variation in high-stakes testing across countries, years and grade levels, we use a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences (DD) design for identification of causal effects. We find that high-stakes testing increases self-reported school-related stress by almost 10 % of a standard deviation. This is primarily driven by a strong effect for girls, meaning that high-stakes testing increases the gender gap in school-related stress. The results are robust to a range of sensitivity analyses.
Subjects: 
high-stakes testing
stress
gender
quasi experiment
JEL: 
I14
I21
I24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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