Mark Levels
Biographic Data
| ID | 220700 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Levels |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Levels |
| SIGNATURE | LEVELS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Maastricht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7516-3926 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 233 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Which parental resources protect against early school-leaving? A structural equation modeling approach
Early school-leaving is considered a societal problem, but it is unclear which family factors explain this. In this article, we focus on three family resources that may explain early school-leaving: parent’s cognitive skills at age 12, parent’s educational attainment, and household income. By combining the Intergenerational Transmission of Skills dataset and administrative data from the Netherlands Cohort Study on Education, we follow the educati…
Understanding Academic Pressure in Primary School
Academic pressure is increasingly recognized as a factor in declining adolescent mental health, yet this phenomenon remains underexplored among early adolescents in primary education. This study investigates sources of academic pressure among 585 Dutch students (286 boys, 294 girls; aged 11–12) in their final year of primary school, and examines its associations with sex, social connectedness, and mental health. One in six students reported exper…
Disconnect To Reconnect
Smartphone bans are gaining popularity in education, with approximately 40% of countries currently implementing such policies. Some schools apply smartphone restrictions to the classroom only (partial bans), while others extend the restrictions to the whole school grounds (full bans), hoping to foster student well-being and strengthen social connectedness at school. However, there is currently no empirical evidence that stricter policies are more…
Likes, Shares, and Symptoms
Social media use has rapidly increased over the past decade, especially among young people. To obtain more insight into the potential negative associations with problematic social media use in Dutch early adolescents, we assessed its relation to self-reported well-being. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 585 students in their final year of primary school (11-12 years old) who completed a questionnaire during school hours. We examined the …
The effect of public childcare on the risk that mothers become Neet
Young women are much more likely to be NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) than young men. Little is known about the extent to which institutional and policy contexts can shape the relationship between young motherhood and NEET status – in particular with respect to the potential role of family policy. This paper explores the relationship between the risk that young mothers become NEET and the costs of Early Childhood Education and Ca…
Does School Health Promotion Have Additional Value for Educational Performance? A Repeated Cross-Sectional Multilevel Study
Little information is available regarding the influence of the interplay between the school context and school health promotion on educational performance. Therefore, we examined whether the variation between primary and secondary schools regarding the educational performance of students could be explained by general school characteristics, school population characteristics, and school health promotion and to what extent these factors interact. W…
School Health Promotion, the Body Mass Index z-Score, and Psychosocial Health in Primary Schools of the Netherlands
Childhood overweight and psychosocial issues remain significant public health concerns. Schools worldwide implement health promotion programs to address these issues and to support the physical and psychosocial health of children. However, more insight is needed into the relation between these health-promoting programs and the Body Mass Index (BMI) z-score and psychosocial health of children, while taking into account how school factors might inf…
School health promotion and fruit and vegetable consumption in secondary schools
School population characteristics explained more variation between schools than Healthy School certification and general school characteristics, especially indicators of parental socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, Healthy School certification seemed to be slightly related to fruit and vegetable consumption, and might contribute to healthier dietary intake. We found small differences for some subgroups, but future research should focus on the imp…
Automation risks of vocational training programs and early careers in the Netherlands
In this article, we study the role of automation risks in the school-to-work transition (STWT) of secondary vocational education (VET) graduates in the Netherlands. We use a combination of administrative and survey data, enriched with estimates of automation risks. Using sequence analysis, we find four ideal-type school-to-work trajectories representing the first 10 years in the labor market: employment, further education, further VET, and NEET. …
Are general skills important for vocationally educated
In this paper, we examine the effect of general skills on wages for vocationally educated workers with a qualification at upper secondary level. While general skills are considered crucial for labour market success of workers in general, it is not clear whether this also holds for the vocationally educated workers. We use the recently developed concept of effective skills to identify the relationship between general skills and wages for this grou…
School health promotion and the consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages in secondary schools
The low percentages of explained variation indicate that school-level characteristics in general (including Healthy School certification) do not matter substantially for the daily consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages. Future research should examine whether school health promotion can contribute to healthier lifestyles, and if so, under which level of implementation and school conditions
Ode aan een vergeten sociologische klassieker
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
The Dynamics of Marginalized Youth
This book studies young people who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET); a prime concern among policymakers. Moving past common interpretations of NEETs as a homogeneous group, it asks why some youth become NEET, whereas other do not. The authors analyse diverse school-to-work patterns of young NEETs in five typical countries and investigate the role of individual characteristics, countries' institutions and policies, and their co…
How Young Mothers Rely on Kin Networks and Formal Childcare to Avoid Becoming Neet in the Netherlands
Motherhood is often cited as one of the main reasons for young women to become NEET (not in employment, education, or training). Given the potential long-term negative implications of NEET status, it is important to understand which types of resources can help young mothers to avoid becoming NEET around childbirth. In this paper we investigate how the chances of young mothers to become and stay NEET around the time of first birth are related to t…
The low skills trap
This paper investigates to what extent the likelihood of young people being long-term NEET can be explained by low literacy skills, how this varies across advanced countries, and how this cross-national variation can be explained by education and social policies. We use PIAAC data and include macro-level indicators on education and social policies. We analyze the likelihood of being long-term NEET versus being in employment or in education/ train…
Early career trajectories of first- and second-generation migrant graduates of professional university
This study explores how the careers of professional university graduates with a first- or second-generation non-Western migrant background evolve within the first four to eight years after graduation, as compared to their Dutch native peers. We find that in the first year after graduation, while holding constant background characteristics, both first- and second-generation migrants experienced lower employment chances, more skill mismatches and l…
Using Data to Advance Educational Research, Policy, and Practice
In many countries, the quality of (large-scale quantitative) educational research is threatened by data challenges. In this article, we present an innovative data research project from the Netherlands in which many of the challenges that come forward in previous literature are addressed. The Netherlands Cohort Study on Education [in Dutch abbreviated as NCO (Nationaal Cohortonderzoek Onderwijs)] uses longitudinal register data on track placement …
Labour market institutions and the challenge of allocating the right people to the right jobs
This article provides empirical evidence on the relation between institutional characteristics of labour markets that frame allocation processes, and optimal skill matching at the individual level. We investigate the extent to which skill-based job-worker matches are associated with employment protection legislation (EPL), unemployment benefits, and enforcing and enabling activating labour market policies. Drawing on data of the OECD’s Programme …
Formal and Informal Social Capital in Germany
Evidence for the often-posited negative relation between ethnic diversity and various measures of social capital is burdened by difficulties measuring the levels of aggregation at which the indicators operate, the common use of cross-sectional data, and by the common omission of macro-level variables that plausibly confound the relation between ethnic diversity and social capital. To overcome these problems, this article studies social capital in…
From school to fitting work
Although optimal labour market allocation of school leavers benefits individuals, employers and societies, a substantial part of European school leavers do not find a job that matches their field or level of education. This paper explores the extent to which horizontal and vertical education-to-job matches of European school leavers from secondary education is associated with the level of stratification, standardization, and the level of vocation…
Unintended Pregnancy and Induced Abortion in the Netherlands 1954-2002
In the Netherlands, abortion is legal, safe, easily available, and free of charge. Paradoxically, it is also extremely rare. Little quantitative research into the Netherlands’ abortion practice has been done. We analyse the fertile life-course of N = 3,793 Dutch women between 1954 and 2002. Using repeated event history analyses and sequential logistic regression, we test hypotheses on individual and societal effects on women’s likelihood of exper…
Immigrant Children's Educational Achievement in Western Countries
This article explores the extent to which macro-level characteristics of destination countries, origin countries, and immigrant communities help explain differences in immigrant children's educational achievement. Using data from the 2003 PISA survey, we analyze the mathematical performance of 7,403 pupils from 35 different origin countries in 13 Western countries of destination. While compositional differences offer some explanatory power, they …
Educational performance of native and immigrant children from various countries of origin
Mostly due to the lack of suitable data, cross-national research on the integration of migrant pupils is still scarce. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question of the extent to which native and first- and second-generation migrants from various regions of origin, living in thirteen different countries of destination, differ in their scholastic ability. Using the PISA 2003 data, we focus primarily on the impact of origin and destination …
Immigrant Children's Educational Achievement in Western Countries
This article explores the extent to which macro-level characteristics of destination countries, origin countries, and immigrant communities help explain differences in immigrant children's educational achievement. Using data from the 2003 PISA survey, we analyze the mathematical performance of 7,403 pupils from 35 different origin countries in 13 Western countries of destination. While compositional differences offer some explanatory power, they …
Educational performance of native and immigrant children from various countries of origin
Mostly due to the lack of suitable data, cross-national research on the integration of migrant pupils is still scarce. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question of the extent to which native and first- and second-generation migrants from various regions of origin, living in thirteen different countries of destination, differ in their scholastic ability. Using the PISA 2003 data, we focus primarily on the impact of origin and destination …
From school to fitting work
Although optimal labour market allocation of school leavers benefits individuals, employers and societies, a substantial part of European school leavers do not find a job that matches their field or level of education. This paper explores the extent to which horizontal and vertical education-to-job matches of European school leavers from secondary education is associated with the level of stratification, standardization, and the level of vocation…
Early career trajectories of first- and second-generation migrant graduates of professional university
This study explores how the careers of professional university graduates with a first- or second-generation non-Western migrant background evolve within the first four to eight years after graduation, as compared to their Dutch native peers. We find that in the first year after graduation, while holding constant background characteristics, both first- and second-generation migrants experienced lower employment chances, more skill mismatches and l…
Using Data to Advance Educational Research, Policy, and Practice
In many countries, the quality of (large-scale quantitative) educational research is threatened by data challenges. In this article, we present an innovative data research project from the Netherlands in which many of the challenges that come forward in previous literature are addressed. The Netherlands Cohort Study on Education [in Dutch abbreviated as NCO (Nationaal Cohortonderzoek Onderwijs)] uses longitudinal register data on track placement …
Unintended Pregnancy and Induced Abortion in the Netherlands 1954-2002
In the Netherlands, abortion is legal, safe, easily available, and free of charge. Paradoxically, it is also extremely rare. Little quantitative research into the Netherlands’ abortion practice has been done. We analyse the fertile life-course of N = 3,793 Dutch women between 1954 and 2002. Using repeated event history analyses and sequential logistic regression, we test hypotheses on individual and societal effects on women’s likelihood of exper…
The low skills trap
This paper investigates to what extent the likelihood of young people being long-term NEET can be explained by low literacy skills, how this varies across advanced countries, and how this cross-national variation can be explained by education and social policies. We use PIAAC data and include macro-level indicators on education and social policies. We analyze the likelihood of being long-term NEET versus being in employment or in education/ train…
How Young Mothers Rely on Kin Networks and Formal Childcare to Avoid Becoming Neet in the Netherlands
Motherhood is often cited as one of the main reasons for young women to become NEET (not in employment, education, or training). Given the potential long-term negative implications of NEET status, it is important to understand which types of resources can help young mothers to avoid becoming NEET around childbirth. In this paper we investigate how the chances of young mothers to become and stay NEET around the time of first birth are related to t…
Formal and Informal Social Capital in Germany
Evidence for the often-posited negative relation between ethnic diversity and various measures of social capital is burdened by difficulties measuring the levels of aggregation at which the indicators operate, the common use of cross-sectional data, and by the common omission of macro-level variables that plausibly confound the relation between ethnic diversity and social capital. To overcome these problems, this article studies social capital in…
Labour market institutions and the challenge of allocating the right people to the right jobs
This article provides empirical evidence on the relation between institutional characteristics of labour markets that frame allocation processes, and optimal skill matching at the individual level. We investigate the extent to which skill-based job-worker matches are associated with employment protection legislation (EPL), unemployment benefits, and enforcing and enabling activating labour market policies. Drawing on data of the OECD’s Programme …
Immigrant Children's Educational Achievement in Western Countries
This article explores the extent to which macro-level characteristics of destination countries, origin countries, and immigrant communities help explain differences in immigrant children's educational achievement. Using data from the 2003 PISA survey, we analyze the mathematical performance of 7,403 pupils from 35 different origin countries in 13 Western countries of destination. While compositional differences offer some explanatory power, they …
Educational performance of native and immigrant children from various countries of origin
Mostly due to the lack of suitable data, cross-national research on the integration of migrant pupils is still scarce. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question of the extent to which native and first- and second-generation migrants from various regions of origin, living in thirteen different countries of destination, differ in their scholastic ability. Using the PISA 2003 data, we focus primarily on the impact of origin and destination …
Unintended Pregnancy and Induced Abortion in the Netherlands 1954-2002
In the Netherlands, abortion is legal, safe, easily available, and free of charge. Paradoxically, it is also extremely rare. Little quantitative research into the Netherlands’ abortion practice has been done. We analyse the fertile life-course of N = 3,793 Dutch women between 1954 and 2002. Using repeated event history analyses and sequential logistic regression, we test hypotheses on individual and societal effects on women’s likelihood of exper…
From school to fitting work
Although optimal labour market allocation of school leavers benefits individuals, employers and societies, a substantial part of European school leavers do not find a job that matches their field or level of education. This paper explores the extent to which horizontal and vertical education-to-job matches of European school leavers from secondary education is associated with the level of stratification, standardization, and the level of vocation…
Formal and Informal Social Capital in Germany
Evidence for the often-posited negative relation between ethnic diversity and various measures of social capital is burdened by difficulties measuring the levels of aggregation at which the indicators operate, the common use of cross-sectional data, and by the common omission of macro-level variables that plausibly confound the relation between ethnic diversity and social capital. To overcome these problems, this article studies social capital in…
Labour market institutions and the challenge of allocating the right people to the right jobs
This article provides empirical evidence on the relation between institutional characteristics of labour markets that frame allocation processes, and optimal skill matching at the individual level. We investigate the extent to which skill-based job-worker matches are associated with employment protection legislation (EPL), unemployment benefits, and enforcing and enabling activating labour market policies. Drawing on data of the OECD’s Programme …
Using Data to Advance Educational Research, Policy, and Practice
In many countries, the quality of (large-scale quantitative) educational research is threatened by data challenges. In this article, we present an innovative data research project from the Netherlands in which many of the challenges that come forward in previous literature are addressed. The Netherlands Cohort Study on Education [in Dutch abbreviated as NCO (Nationaal Cohortonderzoek Onderwijs)] uses longitudinal register data on track placement …
Ode aan een vergeten sociologische klassieker
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
The Dynamics of Marginalized Youth
This book studies young people who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET); a prime concern among policymakers. Moving past common interpretations of NEETs as a homogeneous group, it asks why some youth become NEET, whereas other do not. The authors analyse diverse school-to-work patterns of young NEETs in five typical countries and investigate the role of individual characteristics, countries' institutions and policies, and their co…
How Young Mothers Rely on Kin Networks and Formal Childcare to Avoid Becoming Neet in the Netherlands
Motherhood is often cited as one of the main reasons for young women to become NEET (not in employment, education, or training). Given the potential long-term negative implications of NEET status, it is important to understand which types of resources can help young mothers to avoid becoming NEET around childbirth. In this paper we investigate how the chances of young mothers to become and stay NEET around the time of first birth are related to t…
The low skills trap
This paper investigates to what extent the likelihood of young people being long-term NEET can be explained by low literacy skills, how this varies across advanced countries, and how this cross-national variation can be explained by education and social policies. We use PIAAC data and include macro-level indicators on education and social policies. We analyze the likelihood of being long-term NEET versus being in employment or in education/ train…
Early career trajectories of first- and second-generation migrant graduates of professional university
This study explores how the careers of professional university graduates with a first- or second-generation non-Western migrant background evolve within the first four to eight years after graduation, as compared to their Dutch native peers. We find that in the first year after graduation, while holding constant background characteristics, both first- and second-generation migrants experienced lower employment chances, more skill mismatches and l…
School health promotion and the consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages in secondary schools
The low percentages of explained variation indicate that school-level characteristics in general (including Healthy School certification) do not matter substantially for the daily consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages. Future research should examine whether school health promotion can contribute to healthier lifestyles, and if so, under which level of implementation and school conditions
Does School Health Promotion Have Additional Value for Educational Performance? A Repeated Cross-Sectional Multilevel Study
Little information is available regarding the influence of the interplay between the school context and school health promotion on educational performance. Therefore, we examined whether the variation between primary and secondary schools regarding the educational performance of students could be explained by general school characteristics, school population characteristics, and school health promotion and to what extent these factors interact. W…
School Health Promotion, the Body Mass Index z-Score, and Psychosocial Health in Primary Schools of the Netherlands
Childhood overweight and psychosocial issues remain significant public health concerns. Schools worldwide implement health promotion programs to address these issues and to support the physical and psychosocial health of children. However, more insight is needed into the relation between these health-promoting programs and the Body Mass Index (BMI) z-score and psychosocial health of children, while taking into account how school factors might inf…
School health promotion and fruit and vegetable consumption in secondary schools
School population characteristics explained more variation between schools than Healthy School certification and general school characteristics, especially indicators of parental socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, Healthy School certification seemed to be slightly related to fruit and vegetable consumption, and might contribute to healthier dietary intake. We found small differences for some subgroups, but future research should focus on the imp…
Automation risks of vocational training programs and early careers in the Netherlands
In this article, we study the role of automation risks in the school-to-work transition (STWT) of secondary vocational education (VET) graduates in the Netherlands. We use a combination of administrative and survey data, enriched with estimates of automation risks. Using sequence analysis, we find four ideal-type school-to-work trajectories representing the first 10 years in the labor market: employment, further education, further VET, and NEET. …
Are general skills important for vocationally educated
In this paper, we examine the effect of general skills on wages for vocationally educated workers with a qualification at upper secondary level. While general skills are considered crucial for labour market success of workers in general, it is not clear whether this also holds for the vocationally educated workers. We use the recently developed concept of effective skills to identify the relationship between general skills and wages for this grou…
Likes, Shares, and Symptoms
Social media use has rapidly increased over the past decade, especially among young people. To obtain more insight into the potential negative associations with problematic social media use in Dutch early adolescents, we assessed its relation to self-reported well-being. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 585 students in their final year of primary school (11-12 years old) who completed a questionnaire during school hours. We examined the …
The effect of public childcare on the risk that mothers become Neet
Young women are much more likely to be NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) than young men. Little is known about the extent to which institutional and policy contexts can shape the relationship between young motherhood and NEET status – in particular with respect to the potential role of family policy. This paper explores the relationship between the risk that young mothers become NEET and the costs of Early Childhood Education and Ca…
Which parental resources protect against early school-leaving? A structural equation modeling approach
Early school-leaving is considered a societal problem, but it is unclear which family factors explain this. In this article, we focus on three family resources that may explain early school-leaving: parent’s cognitive skills at age 12, parent’s educational attainment, and household income. By combining the Intergenerational Transmission of Skills dataset and administrative data from the Netherlands Cohort Study on Education, we follow the educati…
Understanding Academic Pressure in Primary School
Academic pressure is increasingly recognized as a factor in declining adolescent mental health, yet this phenomenon remains underexplored among early adolescents in primary education. This study investigates sources of academic pressure among 585 Dutch students (286 boys, 294 girls; aged 11–12) in their final year of primary school, and examines its associations with sex, social connectedness, and mental health. One in six students reported exper…
Disconnect To Reconnect
Smartphone bans are gaining popularity in education, with approximately 40% of countries currently implementing such policies. Some schools apply smartphone restrictions to the classroom only (partial bans), while others extend the restrictions to the whole school grounds (full bans), hoping to foster student well-being and strengthen social connectedness at school. However, there is currently no empirical evidence that stricter policies are more…
Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Demographic economics (8 works) · Population (8 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Demography (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Demography (5 works)