CIC Analysis of Citizenship Test Pass Results

While this has been reported before (Immigrants more likely to fail citizenship test the longer they’re here), obtained this and related documents to see what changes may have been made to the citizenship test that could explain the significant increase in the overall pass rate from 82.7 percent 2010-13 to 90.3 percent.

While unfortunately the relevant memos providing options to the Minister have been extensively redacted (here and here), it is clear that considerable effort was made to improve test scores while maintaining the integrity of the test.

This detailed analysis confirms the importance of education:

Main findings: Regression results show that, after controlling for the effect of other individual characteristics in the model, a few individual characteristics are strongly associated with the citizenship test outcome. Among these characteristics, educational attainment stands out as the most important predictor of the test pass rate. The adjusted pass rate for immigrants with a university degree or above at time of landing is considerably higher than those with lower educational attainment.

Differences across immigration categories and countries of birth are also large. While applicants in the economic immigration categories obtain the highest adjusted test pass rates, applicants in the refugee immigration categories obtain the lowest test pass rates.

Applicants born in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, Algeria, Jamaica, India and Sri Lanka have the lowest adjusted pass rates.

Variables showing modest effect on the pass rate include: age at test, age at landing, official language ability at landing and mother tongue. The differences in test pass rates across categories of all variables are more pronounced for those with lower educational attainment.

Educational attainment at time of landing: • Overall, the test pass rate increases with an applicants’ educational attainment at time of landing. The pass-rate for applicants with Bachelor’s degrees or above is about 20 percentage points higher than those with secondary or less education and 8 percentage points higher than those with trades/diploma/apprenticeship schooling, but 3 percentage points lower than those with Master or Doctorate degrees.

Citizenship Knowledge Test Results – Multivariate Regression Analysis August 2013

Citizenship Knowledge Test Results – Multivariate Regression Analysis Summary Deck 2013