The purpose of the present study was to profile high school students’ achievement as a function of their demographic characteristics, parent attributes, and school behaviors. Students were nested within schools in the Saudi Arabia Kingdom. Out of a large sample of 500k, participants involved 3 random samples of 2,000 students measured during the years 2016, 2017, and 2018. Randomization was conducted at the student level to ensure that all school units will be represented and at their respective frequency. Students were (...) nested within 50 high schools. We adopted the multilevel latent profile analysis protocol put forth by Schmiege et al. and Mäkikangas et al. that account for nested data and tested latent class structure invariance over time. Results pointed to the presence of a 4-profile solution based on BIC, the Bayes factor, and several information criteria put forth by Masyn. Latent profile separation was mostly guided by parents’ education and the number of student absences. Two models tested whether the proportions of level 1 profiles to level 2 units are variable and whether level 2 profiles vary as a function of level 1 profiles. Results pointed to the presence of significant variability due to schools. (shrink)

The purpose of the present studies was to evaluate and predict academic cheating with regard to a national examination in a Middle East country. In Study 1, 4,024 students took part and potential cheaters were classified as those having discrepant scores in multiple administrations that exceeded 1 SD in absolute terms. A latent class mixture analysis suggested two pathways for potential cheating: (a) The first path involved students—most male—who changed city or region of examination during test taking, and (b) the (...) second path described students—most male—who did not change city, region, or center of administration. Study 2 profiled cheaters using a sample of examinees who were actually caught cheating. Participants were 545 students, 253 of whom were caught cheating between 2002 and 2012. Both samples were selected from a pool of 319,219 testees using random sampling procedures. Results indicated that a 4-class solution best fitted the data as in Study 1. Furthermore, a predictive model was tested with an independent cross-validation sample of 112 examinees (56 cheaters, 56 noncheaters). Results indicated that the model classified correctly 78.57 of the new cheating cases (sensitivity) and 94.64% of noncheaters (specificity). (shrink)

The aim of this study was threefold: First, to examine the dimensionality of the construct of General Academic Ability at the subscale level providing additional insights over and above on the conceptualization of the construct. Second, to explore different degrees of measurement invariance of the GAA across gender using more recent advancements in the examination of Measurement Invariance. Third, to examine gender differences across the different facets of the GAA at the latent mean level. The sample consisted of 1,800 high (...) school graduates who applied for higher education in Saudi Arabia. The results from the analysis indicated that the hierarchical model with one higher-order factor and four lower-order cognitive factors exhibited an excellent fit to the data. In terms of the measurement invariance hypothesis, it was found that the hierarchical model exhibits full configural and metric invariance and partial scalar invariance. Finally, using the Latent Mean Difference procedure, the results showed gender differences in the Verbal and GPA domains. Although significant differences were also found in the Scholastic aptitude domain, this finding is not stable due to several non-invariant items within the domain. In both cases, females scored higher than males. Finally, regarding the higher-order factor, the results showed that females scored higher than males. There were no significant differences in the Quantitative domain. (shrink)