Investigation of the factors affecting reading skills in PISA 2018 Turkey data with multilevel structural equation modeling

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international survey funded by OECD. PISA surveys take place every three years and it is a research that has been carried out every three years since 2000 to measure and evaluate the education quality of students between the ages of 15 and 16.The purpose of this study is to examine what the level of multilevel structural relationship between the reading skills of the 15-year-old students participating in PISA 2018 and the latent variables of the students' economic, social and cultural status, enjoyment of reading and school type. The sample of this research consists of 6596 students who remained after the missing data were deleted. In this study, the variables determined from the student survey; economic, social and cultural status, enjoyment of reading, and variable determined from the school survey is school type. Using these variables, a multi-level structural equation model was established as within-group (student level) and between-group (school level) levels.According to the results of the research, it was seen that 61% of the differences in the reading skills of the students were caused by the differences between the schools. Then, the relationship between the variables selected within the scope of the research and the achievement of students' reading skills was examined using a multilevel structural equation model. According to the results obtained, while the relationship between the variables of the economic, social and cultural status and enjoyment of reading at student level and the students' reading skills achievement was found to be significant; The relationship between the school type variable at school level and students' reading skills achievement was not found significant. It was concluded that when the economic, social and cultural status variable was moved to the school level, it strongly affected the success of reading skills. It has been observed that the economic, social and cultural situation variable at the school level has a negative indirect effect on the achievement of schools' reading skills through the school type variable.