Measures and References: Socioeconomic Status

Return to Socioeconomic Status factor page.

Measures

Numerous measures exist to gain a full picture of a student's learning strengths and challenges. Following are examples of measures used to assess this Learner Factor. These measures should be administered and interpreted by experienced professionals.

SES Measurements (American Psychological Association, 2007): Several measurements can be used when determining SES. Typically, household income, education, and occupation are all considered.

References

American Psychological Association, Task Force on Socioeconomic Status. (2007). Report of the APA Task Force on Socioeconomic Status. American Psychological Association.

Becker, N., Vasconcelos, M., Oliveira, V., Santos, F. C. D., Bizarro, L., Almeida, R. M. D., ... & Carvalho, M. R. S. (2017). Genetic and environmental risk factors for developmental dyslexia in children: Systematic review of the last decade. Developmental Neuropsychology, 42(7-8), 423-445.

Balatti, J., & Falk, I. (2002). Socioeconomic contributions of adult learning to community: A social capital perspective. Adult Education Quarterly, 52(4), 281-298.

Bourne, R. R., Flaxman, S. R., Braithwaite, T., Cicinelli, M. V., Das, A., Jonas, J. B., ... & Naidoo, K. (2017). Magnitude, temporal trends, and projections of the global prevalence of blindness and distance and near vision impairment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Global Health, 5(9), e888-e897.

Boutin, D. L., & Wilson, K. B. (2009). Professional jobs and hearing loss: A comparison of deaf and hard of hearing consumers. Journal of Rehabilitation, 75(1), 36-40.

Carpentieri, J.D. & Frumkin, L. (2010) Adult numeracy: A review of research. National Research and Development Centre for Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC), Institute of Education, University of London.

Comings, J. P. (2008). Student persistence in adult literacy and numeracy programs. Tracking adult literacy and numeracy skills (pp. 180-196). Routledge.

Conceiçao, S. C., & Martin, L. G. (2016). Black men and the digital divide. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2016(150), 25-35.

Evans, G. W., & Schamberg, M. A. (2009). Childhood poverty, chronic stress, and adult working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(16), 6545-6549.

Evans, G. W., & Kim, P. (2013). Childhood poverty, chronic stress, self‐regulation, and coping. Child Development Perspectives, 7(1), 43-48.

Field, J. (2012). Is lifelong learning making a difference? Research-based evidence on the impact of adult learning. Second international handbook of lifelong learning (pp. 887-897). Springer.

Field, J. (2011). Adult learning, health and well-being-changing lives. Adult Learner, 13-25.

Greenberg, D. (2008). The challenges facing adult literacy programs. Community Literacy Journal, 3(1), 39-54.

Harrell, E., Langton, L., Berzofsky, M., Couzens, L., & Smiley-McDonald, H. (2014). Household poverty and nonfatal violent victimization, 2008-2012. US Department of Justice.

Ima, C. D., Greenberg, D., Hendrick, R. C., & Nanda, A. (2017). Educational attainment: Limited implications for adult literacy learners. COABE Journal, 6(2), 21.

Keyes, C. L. M., & Waterman, M. B. (2003). Dimensions of well-being and mental health in adulthood. In M. H. Bornstein, L. Davidson, C. L. M. Keyes, & K. A. Moore (Eds.), Crosscurrents in contemporary psychology. Well-being: Positive development across the life course (p. 477-497). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Luo, Y., & Waite, L. J. (2005). The impact of childhood and adult SES on physical, mental, and cognitive well-being in later life. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 60(2), S93-S101.

Martinez, T. E., Wang, T., & Petsod, D. (2005). Supporting English language acquisition: Opportunities for foundations to strengthen the social and economic well-being of immigrant families. Baltimore: The Anne E. Casey Foundation.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Highlights of the 2017 U.S. PIAAC Results Web Report (NCES 2020-777). U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved December 11, 2019 from https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/current_results.asp.

Pew Research Center (2019) Internet/Broadband fact sheet. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/

Prins, E., & Van Horn, B. (2012). Adult learning in family literacy. In B.H. Wasik (Ed.), Handbook of Family Literacy (p. 166-180). Routledge.

Proliteracy. (2020). Adult literacy facts. Retrieved from: https://proliteracy.org/Adult-Literacy-Facts#

Rhone, A., Ver Ploeg, M., Williams, R., & Breneman, V. (2019). Understanding low-Income and low-access census tracts across the nation: Subnational and subpopulation estimates of access to healthy food. United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.

Rowe, M. L. (2008). Child-directed speech: Relation to socioeconomic status, knowledge of child development and child vocabulary skill. Journal of Child Language, 35(1), 185-205.

Simonelli, G., Leanza, Y., Boilard, A., Hyland, M., Augustinavicius, J. L., Cardinali, D. P., ... & Vigo, D. E. (2013). Sleep and quality of life in urban poverty: The effect of a slum housing upgrading program. Sleep, 36(11), 1669-1676.

Stormacq, C., Van den Broucke, S., & Wosinski, J. (2018). Does health literacy mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status and health disparities? Integrative review. Health Promotion International, 34(5), 1-17.

Wanberg, C. R. (2012). The individual experience of unemployment. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 369-396.

Western, B., & Pettit, B. (2010). Incarceration & social inequality. Daedalus, 139(3), 8-19.

Yeager, D. S., Walton, G. M., Brady, S. T., Akcinar, E. N., Paunesku, D., Keane, L., ... & Dweck, C. S. (2016). Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(24), E3341-E3348.

Yoon, H., Jang, Y., Vaughan, P. W., & Garcia, M. (2020). Older adults' Internet use for health information: Digital divide by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 39(1), 105-110.

Yu, R. P., Ellison, N. B., McCammon, R. J., & Langa, K. M. (2016). Mapping the two levels of digital divide: Internet access and social network site adoption among older adults in the USA. Information, Communication & Society, 19(10), 1445-1464.