A comparison of educational achievement in a national sample of Dutch female twins and their matched singleton controls.

Full Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare the educational achievement of female twins (n = 577) and their matched singleton controls (n = 447), who were selected from participants of a national test of educational achievement in the years 1993 to 1998. To assure the representativeness of the selected groups we also compared the achievement scores of the twins and the controls to those of the total Dutch female population tested in the same period. We analyzed the results of the following educational achievement scales:
Language, Mathematics and Information Processing. The results indicated that the singleton classmates performed significantly better than the twins on all three scales. However, the twins performed equally well as compared to the Dutch female population. We believe that our singleton control group was not as properly selected as we intended, a selection bias operative at the level of the schools may have confounded the comparison. We therefore conclude on the basis of a comparison with the performance of the total Dutch female population that there are no differences in educational achievement between female twins and singletons.

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Author information

Author/s: Cohen, Celina C C (CC); Van Goozen, Stephanie H M (SH); Orlebeke, Jacob F (JF); Buitelaar, Jan K (JK); Cohen-Kettenis, Peggy T (PT);

Affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Centre Utrecht, and the Rudolf Magnus Institute for Neurosciences, The Netherlands. c.cohen(-atsign-)psych.azu.nl

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Twin Study

Journal: Twin research : the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies (Twin Res), published in Australia. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Aug; vol 5 (issue 4) : pp 273-6

Dates: Created 2002/09/09; Completed 2002/10/24; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12217233, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Language
Male
Mathematics
Netherlands
Twins - psychology

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