The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) was developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to measure students’ knowledge and skills needed for today’s society. PISA is a large-scale assessment of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science. In this analysis of PISA data from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH), we examined the relationship between gender, mathematics achievement, and perceived meaning in life in BIH students. The sample for this analysis comprised 6480 students (3148 females and 3332 males). The results of the analysis revealed a small but statistically significant, negative relationship between mathematics and the student’s perception of the meaning in life. Boys achieved higher scores in mathematics than girls, but the difference was relatively small. In addition, boys’ rating of meaning in life was higher than that of girls. Knowing what factors influence mathematical achievement might help educators create better intervention programs. In conclusion, we provided some possible explanations for these data.

The overall aim of this study is to examine the association between Swedish students’ attitudes towards mathematics, mathematics achievement as measured by the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), socioeconomic status (SES), and educational background variables. A further aim is to investigate whether students’ attitudes towards mathematics have a mediating role between their mathematics achievement and their background. Several indicators of students’ SES and background, taken from both the TIMSS 2015 database and from Swedish official registers, were used. The overall results show that there were differences in attitudes towards mathematics in relation to the different SES and educational background measures. There are also associations between students’ SES and both TIMSS mathematics achievement and their attitudes towards mathematics. The students’ attitudes towards mathematics only had a small mediation role between the students’ backgrounds and TIMSS mathematics achievement. Finally, although the mediation models had a better fit when including other information, the mediation effect was lower. Practical implications of the obtained results are discussed.