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<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Publishing DTD v1.0 20120330//EN" "JATS-journalpublishing1.dtd"><article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">INFORMATICA</journal-id><journal-title-group><journal-title>Informatica</journal-title></journal-title-group><issn pub-type="epub">0868-4952</issn><issn pub-type="ppub">0868-4952</issn><publisher><publisher-name>VU</publisher-name></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">INF12304</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.3233/INF-2001-12304</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Research article</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>PLSpath Modelling of Various Factors' Influence on Students' Knowledge of Informatics</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="Author"><name><surname>Markauskaitė</surname><given-names>Lina</given-names></name><email xlink:href="mailto:lina@ipc.lt">lina@ipc.lt</email><xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000"/></contrib><aff id="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000">Institute of Informatics and Mathematics, Akademijos 4, 2600 Vilnius, Lithuania</aff></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="epub"><day>01</day><month>01</month><year>2001</year></pub-date><volume>12</volume><issue>3</issue><fpage>413</fpage><lpage>430</lpage><history><date date-type="received"><day>01</day><month>12</month><year>2000</year></date></history><abstract><p>The article presents results of the national survey on teaching and studying informatics at Grades 11 and 12 in the Lithuanian secondary school. This study explores the influence of different factors on students' achievements in informatics. The purpose of this work is to study the interaction between various characteristics of student, teacher and school, and factors of studying and teaching informatics and their joint influence on students' achievements in informatics. In addition, the article explores and contrasts the casual influence structures on the students' knowledge of two different branches of informatics: computer application and programming. To explore these interrelations, PLSpath analytic procedure has been used.</p></abstract><kwd-group><label>Keywords</label><kwd>structural equation modelling</kwd><kwd>PLSpath analysis</kwd><kwd>knowledge of informatics</kwd><kwd>secondary education</kwd></kwd-group></article-meta></front></article>