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The effect of background variables e.g. mothers’ educational or occupational backgrounds, socio-economic status (SES) etc. might differ from one country to another (see Csapó, 2010; Nikolov & Csapó, 2018; Pásztor, 2016). There are many factors that might play a role in this change, such as culture and environment, therefore, different indicators are used to categorize these factors. Background factors sometimes impose serious changes to the results so some international studies like PISA took it in consideration in their data collection and used some of the factors. PISA used factors like social, cultural, and economic in their studies (OECD, 2016). In addition, the variables differ in influence as well. A specific variable in a specific region might have high or low influence on the performance of a group of people (e.g. school children). In other words, the nature of a specific place makes a variable influential and vice versa (see Csapó, 2010). Csapó (2010) explained in his study that the mothers’ educational background is the most significant on pupils’ performance among the other variables in villages and cities in Hungary. There are differences between the two types of settlements (villages and cities) but that did not have any influence on pupils’ achievement, even though the type of settlement is different and the achievement of the pupils is different comparing those who live in villages and the others who live in the cities (Nikolov & Csapó, 2018). Therefore, the best to explain that difference was the parents’ educational level (see also Nikolov & Csapó, 2009). Pásztor (2016), in the results of the training program for the development of inductive reasoning thinking skill found out that the achievements of the participant pupils were strongly influenced by two main things: parents’ education and pupils’ socioeconomic background.

Another important factor that might play a role in changing the results is gender (see Weaver & Raptis, 2001; Clariana & Wallace, 2002; Hotulainen, et al., 2016). Clariana and Wallace (2002) in their study did not find any relation between the gender of the participating pupils and the performance difference. Weaver and Raptis (2001) in their study supported the results of the previous study by stating that in their test they did not have any significant effect difference on the performance of males or females and that was the case for all the components of the test. Molnár (2011) in her training program in inductive reasoning for first grade pupils found out that there were no significant differences between boys and girls in any domains of the measurement points she used in the study. Pásztor (2016) in his training program for assessing and developing inductive

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reasoning by the mean of technology found out in the analysis of the results that the gender of the participating pupils have not caused significant differences meaning that being male or female will not change anything in the achievement. He got the same results with no gender differences in another study on fostering inductive reasoning through mathematical content using computer-based environment.

Some other studies emphasise that gender might play a role in achievement differences. Molnár and Csapó (2019b) regarding identifying early mathematical learning difficulties showed a significant gender-level achievement differences in favour of the girls. They said that the difference change occurred between the different dimensions. Csapó, Lőrincz, and Molnár (2012) in their study on the innovative assessment technologies in educational games for young pupils found in general no differences in the performance while when it came for deeper analyses, a significant difference was found in a specific group of pupils. Therefore, it can be concluded that gender as a background factor might have influence on the achievement level of the pupils.

Other frequently analysed influential factor is the age/year of pupils (see Pásztor, 2016, Csapó, Molnár, & Kinyó, 2008; Molnár, Greiff, & Csapó, 2013) in the development and correlation of thinking skills and the acquisition level of the school curriculum. Or the developmental level of inductive reasoning and its influential effect on the efficacy of the teaching and/or training programs. In other words, if the children were classified to, for example, three levels (low, medium, and high) regarding their achievement (see Pásztor, 2014) in their schools or their achievement in a pretest (if it was a training program), the researchers are able to get more results regarding each group and that provides deeper analyses to which groups are the most affected by the training. The results concerning such a factor can only be generalised in a specific region where the study took place since all pupils have the same characteristics i.e. the same curriculum. Thus, the results cannot be generalised to another environment since the children there have totally different characteristics i.e. curriculum, tasks, teaching methods and so on (see Mayer, 1992; Funke & Frensch, 2007).

The importance of socio-economic status can be seen when it explains the reasons in the differences between the performance of the pupils as it was the case in some of the studies mentioned earlier. Thus, knowing the variable that makes the variance in the achievement gives better results with detailed explanations. In Palestine, we do not have a clear data regarding the SES and the pupils’ achievement therefore we decided to use

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several variables (e.g. gender, grade, mothers’ educational and occupational backgrounds, school achievement) in our studies and find the most influential ones, that will give us more accurate results.