Identifying and analyzing clusters of countries' education data

What is it about?

This document describes the process and summarizes the results of an analysis of 48 countries' TIMSS 2007 8th grade mathematics data. The research culminated with an analysis of country-level differences in the relationships between the dependent variable, math achievement, and several independent variables. The results indicate that math self-confidence is a strong predictor of math achievement across countries, while gender has only a very small impact on these relationships.

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Why is it important?

One important aspect of this work is the determination of clusters of countries determined to be similar to the United States in terms of several global indicators (e.g., Democracy Index, Freedom of the Press, Economic Freedom, and Gender Equality, to name a few). Such a determination allows for comparisons among countries that are considered most like the U.S., as called for by Koretz (2009).