4 ms·
> One of the single largest determiners of schooling success is the number of books at home. This "effect" is the textbook example of correlation != causation.
by greygoo222 1y ago
> One of the single largest determiners of schooling success is the number of books at home.
This "effect" is the textbook example of correlation != causation. By which I mean, it was literally in my AP Psych textbook in high school.
- bodiekane 1y agoExcept, programs which give free books to children in households without books demonstrably improve reading. There's a correlation component, but also there absolutely is a causal connection of access to books and parents reading to children.
- devilbunny 1y agoBut it’s also a big potential confounder, and I certainly don’t know the literature well enough to say how well they managed to account for that - not that education research has a ton of great studies, but they’re unlikely to all be colossal mistakes. Lots of books in the home? Great: you have parents who read for enjoyment, have a stable space for living that has lots of room for books (in the pre-eBook/tablet era, my book collection at college was maybe 1/10 of the books in my parents’ house that were specifically mine, not theirs; just their casual reading filled a wall, and they could afford to install built-in shelves as opposed to moving frequently and having to move both books and shelves), and enough money to buy books. Imagination Library (or similar) can fix the last one, but not the first two.