Table 1.

Different educational measures

	Duration measures	Attainment measures	Literacy measures	Latent variable measures
Examples	Number of years, age leaving school	Qualification, completion of educational level	Reading level	Combination
Method of attainment	Primarily self-report or proxy, could be obtained from records, can be extrapolated from attainment measures	Primarily self-report or proxy, could be obtained from records	Self-report or testing	Could be combination of self-report or proxy, records, testing
Life-course stage	Primarily early life: childhood and adolescence	Primarily early life: childhood, adolescence and early adulthood	All stages up until that point	Throughout life course
Operationalization options dependent on the construct	Continuous, dichotomous, categorical	Dichotomous, categorical,conversion to continuous duration measure	Continuous, dichotomous, categorical	–
Ease of standardization across contexts	Simple to standardize	Complex to standardize	Moderately complex to standardize	Complex to standardize
Validity	Questionable	Moderate	High	Should be moderate to high