Investigation of the relationship between socioeconomic status and literacy in PISA Türkiye data

Previous researchers have identified socioeconomic status as a significant predictor of achievement/literacy. However, it is important to recognize that the influence of socioeconomic status on literacy may vary at different levels of socioeconomic status. Thus, this study analyzes the relationship between socioeconomic status and literacy scores for all domains in PISA Türkiye data from 2003 to 2022 through the Classification and Regression Trees and linear regression methods. Upon examining the results, separate investigations carried out for the lower and upper socioeconomic status groups indicate that R2 values were found to be equal to or greater than .80 in 37 out of the 42 analyses. From 2003 to 2009, the R2 values in both groups were considerably high; however, there has been a notable decline in subsequent periods. The year 2009 demonstrated particularly high R2 values by ESCS in all domains for both upper and lower groups. Consequently, socioeconomic status exhibited a greater predictive power on literacy scores across all domains in the lower socioeconomic group than upper socioeconomic group.