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. 2020 Jun 1;15(6):e0233677.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233677. eCollection 2020.

Segregation within school classes: Detecting social clustering in choice data

Fredrik Jansson  1   2 , Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund  3   4 , Mats Lillehagen  3
Affiliations

Segregation within school classes: Detecting social clustering in choice data

Fredrik Jansson et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

We suggest a new method for detecting patterns of social clustering based on choice data. The method compares similar subjects within and between cohorts and thereby allows us to isolate the effect of peer influence from that of exogenous factors. Using this method on Norwegian register data, we address the question of whether students tend to cluster socially based on similar background. We find that common background correlates with making the same choices of curricular tracks, and that both exogenous preferences and peer influence matter. This applies to immigrant students from the same country, and, to some extent, to descendants of immigrants, but not to students from culturally similar countries. There are also small effects related to parents' education and income.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Probability distributions of correlations in the within- and between-group designs under the null hypothesis that choices are randomly allocated irrespective of country of origin.
The dashed lines represent the observed correlations.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Probability distributions of correlations in the within- and between-group designs under the null hypothesis that choices are randomly allocated irrespective of mother’s country of origin.
The dashed lines represent the observed correlations.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Example of a class from the data, with origin and choice graphs with correlation coefficient 0.059.
The left panel has nodes coloured according to choice and connections between students of the same origin. The right panel has nodes coloured according to origin and connections between students making the same choice.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Probability distributions of relative risks in the within- and between-group designs under the null hypothesis that choices are randomly allocated irrespective of country of origin.
The dashed lines represent the observed risk ratios.
Fig 5
Fig 5. Probability distributions of correlations in the within- and between-group designs under the null hypothesis that choices are randomly allocated irrespective of whether the pairs of students are both immigrants or natives or one is an immigrant and the other a native.
The dashed lines represent the observed correlations.
Fig 6
Fig 6
The left panel shows the distribution of correlation coefficients in each class (within) or programme/school combination (between). The right panel shows the coefficients plotted against their weights (on a log scale) in the meta-analysis. The dashed lines represent the weighted aggregated correlation coefficients from the meta-analysis.
Fig 7
Fig 7. Proportion of pairs of students making the same educational choice with respect to class size.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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