What Drives the Association between Home Chaos and School Grades over Time? A Biometric Cross-Lagged Panel Approach

Abstract

Early exposure to home chaos relates to poor school performance. This is often interpreted as a causal influence in educational research, however underlying common genetic and environmental factors might affect both constructs, thus confound the effect. Genetics explain about 60% of variation in school performance, while (non-) shared environment constitutes the remaining variance. Also differences in home chaos – often considered an “environmental” factor – are partially influenced genetically. Thus, we investigate the presumed causal effect of home chaos on school grades, while controlling for genetic and environmental confounders. We analyzed longitudinal data on school grades and home chaos in the TwinLife study (twins aged 11 and 13). Applying a biometric cross-lagged model allowed us to combine variance decomposition with estimating stability, correlational and cross-lagged paths while controlling for genetic and environmental confounders. Results suggest that genetic confounding fully explains the effects of chaos on grades, also implying mechanisms of gene-environment interplay.

The developmental interplay between household chaos and educational achievement from age 9 through 16 years: A genetically informative study

“…We hypothesized that cross-lagged paths from earlier educational achievement to later household chaos would mainly be due to E, because non-shared environmental influences drive changes in educational achievement (Rimfeld et al, 2018). Finding E influences on the cross-lagged paths would have suggested that effects of educational achievement on household chaos are likely to be causal (Malanchini et al, 2017;McAdams et al, 2020;Starr et al, 2022). Conversely, we predicted that cross-lagged paths from household chaos to educational achievement could be attributed to A and C influences, because these paths capture change that is due to child-driven processes in household chaos (Hannigan et al, 2017).…”

“…Although parents' and children's reports of household chaos converge to some degree, there remains significant within-family variation the perception of household chaos. For example, in a UK population cohort sample, parents' and children's reports of household chaos correlated .53 and .55 when the children where 9 to 12 years old, respectively (N = 3,000 to N = 5,000; Hanscombe, Haworth, Davis, Jaffee, & Plomin, 2011), while in a German population cohort sample the correlation was .32 when children were 11 years old (N = 2,031; Starr, Ruks, Weigel & Riemann, 2022). Overall, perceptions of household chaos appear to vary over time and within families, suggesting that household chaos itself may constitute a modifiable environmental condition that affects children's educational achievement.…”

“…Yet, children's subjective experiences of their environments are more powerful predictors of their psychological development than their objective reality, in part because children actively construct and select their environments (Danese & Widom, 2020;Gidziela et al, 2022;. Children's and parents' reports of household chaos are only moderately correlated (Hanscombe et al, 2011;Starr et al, 2022), and future research is needed to explore the implications of this within-family variance for the design and effectiveness of interventions that seek to modify household chaos.…”