SPATHS data

This is the data collected as part of Study 1 of the SPATHS project (grant number: 101150769; project DOI: 10.3030/101150769). Ethical approval was obtained through the KU Leuven (G-2024-8724-R2)

The overarching goal of the SPATHS project is to develop and test a conceptual framework to understand the causal mechanisms that associate spatial
and maths skills.
There are three actionable objectives:
Objective 1 – Mechanisms: I aim to understand the underlying mechanisms of the spatial-maths association.
Objective 2 – Causality: I aim to test, via observational data and using advanced statistical techniques, whether there is a causal association between different spatial and maths skills and whether or not causality runs in two directions.
Objective 3 – Potential moderators: I aim to understand how the association between spatial skills and maths is moderated by age, sex, differences in the educational environment, and socio-economic status (SES), to find potential foundations for
inequalities in maths.

To address these objectives, we collected various maths measures and spatial measures that have demonstrated or hypothesised to be relate to eachother (correlational in observational data or causational in training studies). The association of
each unique spatial measure to each separate maths measure will be tested in causal modelling to provide a detailed framework of which spatial skills associate to which maths skills.
Data that has been identified in previous literature to be moderators between spatial skills and maths skills has been collected as well, including age, sex, mother tongue, year group in education, and SES.