Every year, the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) honours outstanding scientific work based on data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) with a publication award. This year, Dr Emilija Meier-Faust (DIW - German Institute for Economic Research) and Prof. Dr Rainer Watermann (Freie Universität Berlin) secured the award, which is endowed with 1,000 euros. With their research, the two were able to show why it is important to use reports from both parents and teachers when assessing the personality of primary school children.

In their publication entitled ‘Perceiver Effects and Socioeconomic Background: Contrasting Parent-Reports against Teacher-Reports of Elementary School Students’ Personality‘, Dr Emilija Meier-Faust and Prof Dr Rainer Watermann investigated the influence of parents’ socioeconomic background on the perception of their children's personality. Using a multi-informant approach, they compared how parents judge their children and how their teachers do the same. Meier-Faust and Watermann measured the socio-economic background on the basis of the socio-economic status of the parents on the one hand, and on the other hand they used participation in high culture, i.e. how often parents visit museums, theatres or concerts with their children, for example.

The study concludes that the socio-economic background has a significant influence on how parents perceive their children's personality. Parents with a higher socio-economic status tend to rate their children less favourably than teachers. Participation in high culture activities, on the other hand, has a positive effect on parental perceptions, so that parents who go to the theatre, museum, etc. more often tend to rate their children more positively than teachers. The study suggests that parental perceptions are shaped not only by their children's behaviour, but also by their own experiences and expectations.

The results of Meier-Faust and Watermann can be taken into account when analysing and interpreting parental reports in large-scale assessments such as PISA or TIMSS. The two authors recommend including additional perspectives, such as reports from teachers, to obtain a more comprehensive picture of a child's personality. In addition, socio-economic indicators should be used as important control variables to take into account the influence of family background on personality assessments.

Dr Emilija Meier-Faust and Prof Dr Rainer Watermann used data from the NEPS starting cohort 2 (kindergarten) as well as data from the ‘Transition’ study (Maaz et al., 2010). This is a national extension of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007 and was published in the Journal of Personality Assessment in December 2023.

An interdisciplinary jury made up of members of LIfBi management decided on the awarding of the publication prize. Prof Dr Christian Aßmann explained the jury's decision as follows: ‘Emilija Meier-Faust and Rainer Watermann utilise the richness of the NEPS data in the best possible way, fully exploiting the potential of the longitudinal section. The multi-informant perspective they used allows a comparative view of the assessment of parents and teachers over time’. Aßmann also emphasised the importance of the study for educational research: ‘The study shows how important it is to draw on reports from both parents and teachers when assessing the personality of primary school children in order to obtain a differentiated picture. It emphasises the importance of multi-perspective approaches and raises awareness of how strongly socio-economic differences influence the perceptions of parents and teachers.’

For Emilija Meier-Faust, the NEPS Publication Prize is also an incentive for her further scientific work: ‘The award serves as confirmation that it is worth continuing to work on the difficult research questions, even if you sometimes think you have taken on too much.’

The award was presented during the 9th NEPS conference at the LIfBi in Bamberg. Emilija Meier-Faust gave the keynote speech at the NEPS conference, which traditionally also firms as a LIfBi Lecture.

Bibliographic information

Meier-Faust, E., & Watermann, R. (2023). Perceiver Effects and Socioeconomic Background: Contrasting Parent-Reports against Teacher-Reports of Elementary School Students’ Personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 106(4), 482–495. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2023.2286449