Some antecedents of educational attainment

Abstract

A selection of ability, social class and personality measures were administered to a large, representative sample of boys attending 5th grade in 1957, and scores on these variables wee correlated with indices of the subsequent educational attainments of 343 of the boys. These data were factor analyzed and six main factors were identified. It was found that ability, social class and interpersonal competence factors were the most important for educational achievement and for most cases of leaving school at an early age. The results are seen as very similar to comparable American studies.