Division of Psychology, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, 171 77, Stockholm, Sweden.
Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
BMC Psychol. 2021 Sep 18;9(1):145. doi: 10.1186/s40359-021-00653-z.
Cognitive ability and socioeconomic background (SEB) have been previously identified as determinants of achieved level of education. According to a "discrimination hypothesis", higher cognitive ability is required from those with lower SEB in order to achieve the same level of education as those with higher SEB. Support for this hypothesis has been claimed from the observation of a positive association between SEB and achieved level of education when adjusting for cognitive ability. We propose a competing hypothesis that the observed association is due to residual confounding.
To adjudicate between the discrimination and the residual confounding hypotheses, data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97, N = 8984) was utilized, including a check of the logic where we switched predictor and outcome variables.
The expected positive association between SEB and achieved level of education when adjusting for cognitive ability (predicted by both hypotheses) was found, but a positive association between cognitive ability and SEB when adjusting for level of education (predicted only by the residual confounding hypothesis) was also observed.
These results highlight the potential use of reversing predictors and outcomes to test the logic of hypothesis testing, and support a residual confounding hypothesis over a discrimination hypothesis in explaining associations between SEB, cognitive ability, and educational outcome.
认知能力和社会经济背景（SEB）先前被确定为教育程度的决定因素。根据“歧视假设”，那些社会经济背景较低的人需要更高的认知能力，才能达到与社会经济背景较高的人相同的教育水平。在调整认知能力后，观察到 SEB 与所达到的教育水平之间存在正相关关系，这支持了这一假设。我们提出了一个竞争假设，即观察到的相关性是由于残余混杂造成的。
为了在歧视假设和残余混杂假设之间做出裁决，利用了 1997 年全国青年纵向调查（NLSY97，N=8984）的数据，包括检查我们切换预测变量和结果变量的逻辑。
在调整认知能力后，发现了 SEB 和所达到的教育水平之间预期的正相关关系（两个假设都预测到了），但也观察到了认知能力和 SEB 之间的正相关关系，而调整教育水平时（仅由残余混杂假设预测）。
这些结果突出了反转预测变量和结果来检验假设检验逻辑的潜在用途，并支持残余混杂假设而不是歧视假设，以解释 SEB、认知能力和教育结果之间的关联。
