Improving non-cognitive skills

This addition to the literature on non-cognitive skills examines how a remedial education can actually enhance those skills.

Targeting Non-Cognitive Skills to Improve Cognitive Outcomes: Evidence from a Remedial Education Intervention
Holmlund, Helena & Silva, Olmo
A growing body of research highlights the importance of non-cognitive skills as determinants of young people's cognitive outcomes at school. However, little evidence exists about the effects of policies that specifically target students' non-cognitive skills as a way to improve educational achievements. In this paper, we shed light on this issue by studying a remedial education programme aimed at English secondary school pupils at risk of school exclusion and with worsening educational trajectories. The main peculiarity of this intervention is that it solely targets students' non-cognitive skills – such as self-confidence, locus of control, self-esteem and motivation – with the aim of improving pupils' records of attendance and end-of-compulsory-education (age 16) cognitive outcomes. We evaluate the effect of the policy on test scores in standardized national exams at age-16 using both least squares and propensity-score matching.
http://ftp.iza.org/dp4476.pdf

The Ph.D. Completion Project

Thanks to Michael Egan for flagging this upcoming conference for me: THE EVOLVING LANDSCAPE OF IRISH GRADUATE EDUCATION (IUA Fourth Level Network Annual Conference 2009). At the conference, Prof. Jon Butler will discuss Yale's participation in the US Council for Graduate Schools 'Ph.D. Completion Project'. More information on the Ph.D. Completion Project is available from http://www.phdcompletion.org/. "The Ph.D. Completion Project aims to produce the most comprehensive and useful data on attrition from doctoral study and completion of Ph.D. programs yet available." Some publications fom the project are available here.

On the subject of "graduate student attrition", I was recently reading some comments from a keynote address given by Claudia Mitchell-Kernan (Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of Graduate Division, University of California, Los Angeles) to an NSF workshop on graduate student attrition in the United States. Here's an excerpt: "Finally, let me address the cohort that offers the most difficulty for those of us interested in attrition. The students who drift away after being advanced to candidacy are often considered to be the most problematic. When these students leave, they leave at the greatest personal and societal cost." Here is a link to the entire summary of the NSF Workshop on Graduate Attrition.

Finally, related research by Stock, Finegan and Siegfried (AER, 2009) was mentioned on the blog before. It shows that finishing an economics Ph.D. within the designated time is affected by an array of factors, which I won't relay now. The authors conclude that "many considerations unique to individual students and faculty that we cannot measure—such as ambition, motivation, persistence, organizational skills, the creativity of students, and interest in students’ success as well as mentoring and motivational skills among graduate faculty — matter more than the myriad characteristics we were able to measure, which collectively account for less than 15 percent of the variation in completion among students." This suggests that non-cognitive ability plays an important role in Ph.D. completion.

Smile Like You Mean It

Thanks to Eoin McL for giving me a new insight into what we consider to be non-cognitive ability (or non-cognitive skill). I've discussed this concept before in relation to labour market earnings, graduate education, life expectancy and development of cognitive skill.

Eoin pointed me towards the author Samuel Smiles, who according to Wikipedia, was editor of the Leeds Times from 1838-1845. In this role, he advocated radical causes ranging from women's suffrage to free trade to parliamentary reform. Wikipedia reports that in the 1850s he seems to have completely given up on parliamentary reform and other structural changes as a means of social advance. For the rest of his career, he advocated individual self improvement. This is the link to what we think of now as non-cognitive skills. Smiles is best known as the writer of what can be considered as self-help books, some of which are listed below:

Self-Help (with Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance), London, 1859
Character, London, 1871
Thrift, London, 1875
Duty, London, 1880
Life and Labour, London 1887

I'm currently reading the first book; electronic copies of this and many others are available here on the Project Gutenberg website. The Smilesian view on the importance of education is provided here by James Stansfield.

The Labor Market Returns to Cognitive and Noncognitive Ability: Evidence from the Swedish Enlistment

Lindqvist, Erik (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))
Westman, Roine (New York University)

IFN Working Paper No. 794, 2009

We use data from the military enlistment for a large representative sample of Swedish men to assess the importance of cognitive and noncognitive ability for labor market outcomes. The measure of noncognitive ability is based on a personal interview conducted by a psychologist. Unlike survey-based measures of noncognitive ability, this measure is a substantially stronger predictor of labor market outcomes than cognitive ability. In particular, we find strong evidence that men who fare badly in the labor market in the sense of long-term unemployment or low annual earnings lack noncognitive but not cognitive ability. We point to a technological explanation for this result. Noncognitive ability is an important determinant of productivity irrespective of occupation or ability level, though it seems to be of particular importance for workers in a managerial position. In contrast, cognitive ability is valuable only for men in qualified occupations. As a result, noncognitive ability is more important for men at the verge of being priced out of the labor market.

Prof. James Heckman Ulysses Lecture

In advance of Prof. James Heckman's keynote lecture at the IEA on the 26th April, it's worth noting that the following MP4 podcast lecture is available on the Geary website. Its from 7th June 2006 and was given by Prof. Heckman to mark the awarding of his UCD Ulysses Medal and his appointment as UCD Professor of Science and Society. The lecture is entitled ‘The Economics of Child Development’; Prof. Heckman talks about the importance of measuring non-cognitive ability (as discussed in a recent blog-post) at the beginning.

"Bart, Don't Make Fun of Grad. Students, They Just Made a Terrible Life Choice"

Thanks to the Organizations and Markets Blog for pointing out this clip from the Simpsons where Bart explains graduate school. I can think of a few Matt Groening fans in Geary who should get a kick out of this. Another take on grad school by Groening is available here. While all of this may seem quite entertaining in cartoon sketches, we should bear in mind that there are some very serious aspects to Ph.D. graduates' skills-matching and the non-cognitive aspects of Ph.D. student persistence. These have been discussed on this blog before (follow the links). Also related is Lex Borghan's and Bart Golsteyn's (not Simpson!) work on "Skill Transferability, Regret and Mobility".

Using Measures of Non-Cognitive Ability in Economics

Cognitive ability (as measured by test scores) only determines part of a person's success in the labour market. This came into sharp focus in the economics profession at the 2001 meeting of the American Economics Association. At this meeting a number of papers were presented about the importance of non-cognitive ability (also referred to by some authors as 'non-cognitive skills'). An example is Heckman and Rubinstein (2001) who mention non-cognitive skills such as "persistence, reliability and self-discipline". Most often though, the phrasing of "non-cognitive ability" is used, for example: Heckman, Stixrud and Urzua (JLE, 2006): "The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labour Market Outcomes and Social Behavior."

Heckman and Rubinstein (2001) identified the importance of non-cognitive abilities with their observation that high school equivalency recipients earn less than high school graduates despite the fact that the high school equivalency recipients are smarter. They attribute this to the negative non-cognitive attributes of equivalency recipients originally dropping out. Their conclusion is that individuals with higher amounts of persistence and self-discipline may be more likely to attain academic qualifications.

In relation to further evidence, Heckman, Stixrud and Urzua (2006) model the influence of young individuals' cognitive and non-cognitive abilities on schooling and earnings. They find that better non-cognitive abilities lead to more schooling, but also have an earnings return over and above this. Kern and Friedman (2008) de-compose (overall) conscientiousness into a range of non-cognitive abilities, including persistence, industriousness, organisation and discipline (read previous blog discussion on this here).

The trait of conscientiousness is taken from the "Big Five" set of personality characteristics. Kyllonen, Walters and Kaufman (2005) review the literature on noncognitive constructs (such as the "Big Five"), and conclude with a discussion of how non-cognitive constructs (or personality factors) might be used in admissions and guidance applications for graduate education (read previous blog discussion on this here).

Braakmann (2009) has used the German Socio-Economic Panel to show that differences in various non-cognitive traits, specifically the Big Five, contribute to gender inequalities in wages and employment (this was previously mentioned on the blog here). Mueller and Plug (2004) shows that the labour market values conscientiousness and openness to experience for women (previous discussion on the blog here --- in relation to non-cognitive personality, education and earnings).

Kyllonen (2008) is perhaps the most detailed assessment of how to measure non-cognitive abilities; he associates the non-cognitive abilities shown below with the "Big Five" personality traits. Kyllonen is based at the Princeton Educational Testing Service (ETS) and put forward the framework below ("Enhancing Noncognitive Skills to Boost Academic Achievement") at a 2008 Washington conference entitled 'Educational Testing in America: State Assessments, Achievement Gaps, National Policy and Innovations'.