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Parental education as an indicator of socioeconomic status: Improving quality of data by requiring consistency across measurement occasions

¹ Research Centre for Health Promotion, University of Bergen, Norway
² Research Centre for Health Promotion, University of Bergen, Norway and Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Adolescent Health Research Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa,
³ Department of Psychiatry, Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
⁴ Health Promotion Unit, School of Health Sciences,University of Limpopo, Turfloop Campus, Polokwane, South Africa

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

	Abstract

Aims: Adolescents reports of parents education are sometimes used as indicators of socioeconomic status in surveys of health behaviour. The quality of such measurements is questionable. We hypothesized that consistent reporting of parentseducation across measurement occasions in prospective panel studies indicates a higher quality of data than single or inconsistent reports. Methods: A multi-site, prospective panel study (three measurement occasions) was carried out amongadolescents in Cape Town and Mankweng (South Africa), and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Analyses were based on datafrom students participating at baseline and with a valid code for school number (n=51,684). Results: For Cape Town and Dar es Salaam students, the associations between parents education and an alternative indicator of socioeconomic status(both measured at baseline) increased with increasing consistency of reports about parents education across measurement occasions. For Cape Town, the associations of fathers education with a range of behavioural and social cognition variableswere significantly stronger among consistent than among other students. The pattern was the same for mothers education, but with fewer significant interaction effects. Conclusions: Requiring consistency of reports across datacollectionoccasions may, under the right combination of circumstances, make a difference. Insignificant andclose to zero associations may turn out to be at least moderately strong and statistically significant. When applying indicators of socioeconomic status, such as parents highest level of completed education, it is mostadvantageous to use data from prospective panel studies, and to check for consistency of answers across measurement occasions.

Key Words: Adolescents, consistency, education, parents, reliability, socioeconomic status, South Africa, survey, Tanzania, validity

First published on March 7, 2008, doi:10.1177/1403494808086917

Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 2009;37:16.

A more recent version of this article appeared on June 1, 2009


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