Motivation, test scores and economic success

Mostra el registre complet Registre parcial de l'ítem

• dc.contributor.author Segal, Carmitca
• dc.contributor.other Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Departament d'Economia i Empresa
• dc.date.accessioned 2017-07-26T10:50:24Z
• dc.date.available 2017-07-26T10:50:24Z
• dc.date.issued 2006-11-01
• dc.date.modified 2017-07-23T02:12:14Z
• dc.description.abstract This paper argues that low-stakes test scores, available in surveys, may be partially determined by test-taking motivation, which is associated with personality traits but not with cognitive ability. Therefore, such test score distributions may not be informative regarding cognitive ability distributions. Moreover, correlations, found in survey data, between high test scores and economic success may be partially caused by favorable personality traits. To demonstrate these points, I use the coding speed test that was administered without incentives to National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY) participants. I suggest that due to its simplicity its scores may especially depend on individuals' test-taking motivation. I show that controlling for conventional measures of cognitive skills, the coding speed scores are correlated with future earnings of male NLSY participants. Moreover, the coding speed scores of highly motivated, though less educated, population (potential enlists to the armed forces) are higher than NLSY participants' scores. I then use controlled experiments to show that when no performance-based incentives are provided, participants' characteristics, but not their cognitive skills, affect effort invested in the coding speed test. Thus, participants with the same ability (measured by their scores on an incentivized test) have significantly different scores on tests without performance- based incentives.
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdfca
• dc.identifier https://econ-papers.upf.edu/ca/paper.php?id=1124
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/897
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.relation.ispartofseries Economics and Business Working Papers Series; 1124
• dc.rights L'accés als continguts d'aquest document queda condicionat a l'acceptació de les condicions d'ús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/
• dc.subject.keyword Test scores
• dc.subject.keyword Motivation
• dc.subject.keyword Cognitive skills
• dc.subject.keyword Non-cognitive skills
• dc.subject.keyword Earnings
• dc.subject.keyword Behavioral and Experimental Economics
• dc.subject.keyword Labour, Public, Development and Health Economics
• dc.title Motivation, test scores and economic successca
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaper