Using PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) data, we investigate which countries' schools can be be classified as significantly better or weaker than Germany's as regards the reading literacy of primary school children. The `standard' approach is to conduct separate tests for each country relative to the reference country (Germany) and to reject the null of equally good schools for all those countries whose $p$-value satisfies p_i< 0.05. We demonstrate that this approach ignores the multiple testing nature of the problem and thus overstates differences between schooling systems by producing unwarranted rejections of the null. We employ various multiple testing techniques to remedy this problem. The results suggest that the `standard' approach may overstate the number of significantly different countries by up to 30%.
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
12008.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Savin, N.E., 1984.
"Multiple hypothesis testing,"
Handbook of Econometrics,
in: Z. Griliches† & M. D. Intriligator (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 14, pages 827-879
Elsevier.
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