Human Resources and Skills Development Canada
Symbol of the Government of Canada

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

www.hrsdc.gc.ca

Reading skills of young immigrants in Canada: the effects of duration of residency, home language exposure and schools - June 2008

5. Multivariate analyses

Multivariate analyses were conducted to examine the relative importance of variables already shown to be significant through bivariate analyses. Table 2 presents results from a series of multivariate analyses. A multivariate analysis is more appropriate in studying differences between the three groups of students, as it allows for comparisons between specific groups with similar characteristics. In total, five multivariate models were created to analyse a range of issues related to the reading performance of immigrants. Each model contained the same set of 17 control variables. These ranged from province of residence, parental education aspirations for the students to student's socio-economic status (for a complete list of variables see appendix A). All models were estimated by the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) methodology.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provided 5 plausible values as well as 1,000 balanced replicate weights (for more information on plausible values and balanced replicate weights see appendix B). All of these were used in the estimations.

Do the differences in the reading performance between native, first generation and immigrant students persist after controlling for various key socio-demographic factors?

The results of multivariate regressions are reported in Table A1 in Appendix A. Consistent with the previous literature, the speciation controlled for gender, family characteristics, socio economic status (hereafter referred to as SES), parental aspirations and province. Since the objective of the paper is to examine what happens to differences in performance for three groups, the intent was to control for some of the key socio-demographic variables only. Overall, the model fitted was able to explain roughly 23% variation in reading scores across students in Canada. There were no significant differences found between the three groups of students in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics. Hence none of the models report any interaction effects.

The following discussion explores the differences in the reading performance of the three groups of students by gender, length of residency and language spoken at home. Based on coefficient estimates from the five models presented in Table A1, the information is summarized in Figures 4, 5 and 6.

Overall, immigrant students perform significantly below Canadian born and first generation students even after controlling for various socio-economic characteristics including SES (Figure 4 — model 1)

Models 1 and 3 — Relative difference in reading scores between native students and students with various residency types and home language*
Click here to enlarge

Before controlling for various characteristics, there was no apparent difference in the reading performance of Canadian born and first generation students in Canada. However, after controlling for other factors, there appears to be a difference of roughly 13 points which is statistically significant. Similarly, the reading performance of immigrant students falls roughly 38 points (22 points without controlling for other factors) below that of Canadian born students.

The differences in reading performance are even larger in magnitude among immigrant and first generation males (Figure 5 – model 2)

Model 2 - Relative difference in reading scores between native girls and students with various residency types and gender*
Click here to enlarge

Relative to Canadian born females, every other group performs significantly lower in reading literacy. Canadian born males perform roughly 30 points below Canadian born females, even after controlling for other characteristics. This is consistent with previous work in this area. In comparisons, first generation females perform 13 points below their Canadian born counterparts, the lowest of all differences in reading performance. However, immigrant females score significantly lower than the Canadian born females, by about 39 points.

First generation male students also score below the average score of Canadian born females (41 points). However the gender difference between female and male student is not statistically different for the two groups — Canadian born and first generation students (close to 30 points). A similar difference exists between female and male immigrant students.

Overall, both male and female immigrant students perform significantly below their Canadian counterparts. Relative to Canadian born females, the difference is close to 66 points for male immigrants and 39 points for female immigrants. These are very large differences especially after controlling for various socio-economic characteristics of students.

Exposure to English or French at home tends to mediate a big part of the disadvantage in reading performance of first generation and immigrant students (Figure 4 — model 3)

Since the gender difference is similar across the three groups, the remaining analysis focuses on the groups of students irrespective of gender. The comparison group is Canadian born students who speak the language of PISA test at home. The test was administered in Canada's two official languages, English and French. Canadian born students who spoke a different language at home than in which the test was taken (this also includes French minority language students) performed 41 points lower than those who were exposed to the test language at home. Since a distinction is made between these two groups, the differences are magnified partly due to the higher performance of the reference group.

First generation and immigrants who are exposed to one of the two official languages (which was also the language of the test) at home tend to have much improved reading outcomes compared to their Canadian born counterparts. The disadvantage is reduced to 8 for the first generation students and 17 points for immigrant students, representing a big drop among the immigrants in particular.

The first generation and immigrant students who are not exposed to either English or French at home performed significantly lower compared to their Canadian born counterparts, by roughly 25 and 52 points respectively. These are much larger differences in magnitude compared to the ones reported earlier for the overall groups.

With increased residency in Canada, the reading performance of immigrant students tends to improve (Figure 6 — model 4)

Models 4 and 5 — Relative difference in reading scores between native/first generation students and immigrant students with various lengths of residency in Canada and home language*
Click here to enlarge

Immigrant students with Canadian residency of less than 5 years tend to have significantly lower reading performance relative to their Canadian born peers, over 60 points on the reading scale. These students are more likely to have arrived in Canada in their teens and are likely to have lesser number of years of exposure to the Canadian education system and language. Immigrant students who have been in Canada for a duration of 5 or more years have 20 points disadvantage in reading performance compared to their Canadian born counterparts not controlling for their exposure to the language of PISA test at home.

When exposure to test language at home is accounted for, the difference in reading performance of recent and established immigrant students is no longer statistically different (Figure 5 — model 5)

Controlling for exposure to test language at home for immigrants has a significant impact on reading differences between immigrants and Canadian born students. Among the recent immigrants and those with longer residency in Canada, the differences are no longer statistically significant. In the case of the recent immigrants, although the coefficient is -25.5, but the result is not statistically robust due to a small sample size. Despite so, the coefficient is much smaller than the overall disadvantage of 60 points for recent immigrants. The differences in reading performance for those who are not exposed to the test language at home persist and are larger in magnitude — close to 75 points for recent immigrants and 29 points for those who have been in Canada 5 years or more.

Footer

Date Modified:
2008-06-11