Identification of underachievers in Hong Kong: do different methods selectdifferent underachievers?

Although academic underachievement is a familiar topic in educational resea rch, there is no consensus on how underachievers should be selected. This s tudy aimed to compare different selection methods, absolute split method, s imple difference score method, regression method and nomination, in the ide ntification of underachievers from a sample of 126 Chinese Grade 7 students . The results indicated that the three different statistical methods showed high congruence in selecting underachievers, but nomination selected a dif ferent group of underachievers. It was suggested that, depending on researc h or intervention purposes, information from statistical methods and nomina tion might combine to provide a more comprehensive identification procedure .