Relationship between computer use and educational achievement

International large-scale assessments such as PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS are carried out not only to describe educational achievement but also to examine factors that influence educational achievement. In more recent years, computer use at home has been examined as a factor that has a potential impact on educational achievement. However, methodological and conceptual issues need to be taken into account when studying the effects of computer use at home on educational achievement in large-scale assessments. In this chapter, we specifically address the role of causality, the endogeneity bias, the proximity to educational achievement, and the psychological mechanisms of computer use at home. We present an example of examining the effects of computer use at home on mathematical achievement using data from a German sample of students who took part in the PISA 2006 study. The example shows that there is a risk to overestimate the role of computer use at home for educational achievement when factors other than computer use at home are not included in the statistical analyses and when computer use at home is operationalized in way that fails to address the psychological mechanisms underlying computer use at home.