Effects Of Non-cognitive Skills Research Articles

Temperament traits and economic preferences predict occupational choice beyond human capital variables

Standard labor market models have mainly focused on human capital theory, which emphasizes the role of education, experience, and individuals’ different skill levels in determining occupational choice. The recent literature, however, has shown that noncognitive (“soft”) skills are also strong predictors for vocational behavior. Economics provides little guidance on the effects of noncognitive skills on occupational choice. In applied psychology, personality/temperament traits and economic preferences refer to the characteristics explaining how individuals may act differently in similar situations related to occupational choice. We utilize the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 (n = 4,731 to 5,882) to explore the value of incorporating temperament traits and economic preferences in occupational choice. We explore whether temperament traits contribute to occupational choice, using data from the NFBC1966 for the years 2004 to 2012, inclusive. Occupational groups are chosen to be distinct with respect to the requisite skills, education levels, and tasks. The novelty of our data allows us to determine whether temperament traits and economic preferences have significant impacts on occupational choice, while controlling for other variables related to the human capital approach. We find that temperament traits and economic preferences are important contributors of vocational behavior. Our analysis highlights that it is important to jointly explore the effects of the human capital model, noncognitive traits and other nonpecuniary factors in analyzing occupational choices among individuals. We reveal distinct temperament traits for different occupations. To our knowledge, there exists no evidence about how individuals’ temperament traits, economic preferences, and the human capital approach jointly are sorted into occupational choices. In addition, the novelty of our data allows us to include education, among other factors, to control our findings. We find significant differences across occupations regarding temperament traits.

Non-cognitive skills and social gaps in digital skills: Evidence from ICILS 2018

Using data from the 2018 round of the International Computer and Literacy Survey (ICILS), this study looks at the effect of non-cognitive skills (e.g., motivation, ambition, and conscientiousness) on digital competences as measured by the Computer and Information Literacy (CIL) test score. Non-cognitive skills may be especially important in low-stakes tests such as ICILS, where students face no consequences — positive or negative — as a result of their performance. The empirical results show that several non-self-reported measures acting as proxies for non-cognitive skills are significant determinants of CIL test scores. Furthermore, the findings point at differences in non-cognitive skills across gender, immigrant background, and socioeconomic status. This suggests that one should be cautious when inferring about inequality in digital competences along these dimensions using low-stakes test scores, and underscores the importance of controlling for non-cognitive skills.

Measuring Perseverance and Passion in Distance Education Students: Psychometric Properties of the Grit Questionnaire and Associations With Academic Performance

With modern technological advances, distance education has become an increasingly important education delivery medium for, for example, the higher education provided by open universities. Among predictive factors of successful learning in distance education, the effects of non-cognitive skills are less explored. Grit, the dispositional tendency to sustain trait-level passion and long-term goals, has raised much research interest and gained importance for predicting academic achievement. The Grit Questionnaire, measuring Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interests, has been shown to be a reliable instrument in traditional university student populations. However, the measurement and predictive validity of this questionnaire is still unknown for adult distance education university students who differ from traditional students in various ways (e.g., having a wider range of student ages). Based on a sample of 2,027 students from a distance education university, this study assessed the psychometric properties of the two-factor structure grit measured by the Grit Questionnaire. The findings suggest that the short form of the Grit Questionnaire is a potentially useful assessment tool for measuring the grit construct for distance learning higher education and that the Consistency of Interests factor is especially relevant to consider the improvement of learning performance for distance education in terms of courses credit and exam attempts. The measurement precision of the Perseverance of Effort factor, however, should be improved in future research to provide higher measurement accuracy and broader item coverage.

Personality traits and performance in online labour markets

ABSTRACT We investigate the impact of non-cognitive skills on the quality of task-specific outcomes by conducting a quasi-experiment on a well-known online crowdsourcing platform. We show that worker’s performance varies with personality traits, gender, human capital, crowdsourcing experience and work effort. Regarding the effects of non-cognitive skills, we find that worker’s performance in online microtasks is positively related to extraversion and agreeableness. The positive impact of extroverts is also revealed when performance is adjusted for task completion time. These findings provide implications regarding the integration of selection mechanisms in online labour matching platforms aiming in uncovering micro-workers’ soft skills to improve performance and consequently the allocation of resources in online microtasks.

Reconciling heterogeneous results on the returns to skills in Africa

ABSTRACT Recent evidence indicates substantial heterogeneity in the returns to skills across countries, but only a few studies have explained the varying patterns in the return to skills. Using the 2013 STEP data for Ghana and Kenya, we estimate the causal effect of cognitive and noncognitive skills on a large set of labour market outcomes by controlling for important predetermined variables. We find that cognitive skill remains an important predictor of labour market outcomes but its effect is largely mediated by the year of schooling. We document that the labour market effects of noncognitive skills are smaller than reading proficiency, but with large variation across labour market outcomes. Interestingly, we show that schooling does not mediate the effect of noncognitive skills, meaning most of these skills are acquired outside the classroom. A decomposition analysis shows that local labour market characteristics, such as formal jobs and skilled labour demand, explains the lion share of the heterogeneity whereas the job-skill matching quality plays a significant role in the unexplained part.

The Effect of Non-cognitive Skills on Comprehensive Capacities of Workers: KAIZEN Education and Workers of Garment Industry in Ethiopia

The Effect of Non-cognitive Skills on Comprehensive Capacities of Workers: KAIZEN Education and Workers of Garment Industry in Ethiopia

Grit in the path to e-learning success

E-learning systems are emerging in many settings of our society. Schools, universities, and several other organizations use these systems. E-learning systems allow learning anytime and anywhere. This medium may seem to be the answer to all learning barriers, but the effect of non-cognitive skills on the success of e-learning systems is yet to be explored. Latest studies demonstrate that students with high grit levels, stamina in pursuing long term objectives, achieve better results in learning. In our study we propose a theoretical model studying grit as a determinant of e-learning systems success. The study was conducted on a sample of university students' sample, and a theoretical model was validated using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results indicate that grit has positive effects on satisfaction and in students' individual performance. The results help to improve e-learning strategies and to understand e-learning success, explained by students’ skills and systems characteristics.

Noncognitive skills and job match: evidence from military applicants

The study examines the effect of noncognitive skills on early career choices among young job seekers. Specifically, we analyze the influence of personality traits on the decision by military applicants either to choose the military or a civilian career option. We use a unique micro-level data-set of applicants to the US Navy and exploit the fact that many individuals who initially apply for military jobs eventually choose civilian careers instead. In this institutional setting, job candidates use new information to update their beliefs about the military job match. Personality traits are viewed as productive abilities that influence applicants’ expectations about the economic return to the job and occupational training offered by the Navy. The study finds that many of the 15 lower order personality facets associated with the Big Five traits are predictive of applicants’ job choices and provides suggestive evidence of a link between personality traits, job match expectations, and career choice.

Effect of Noncognitive Skills and Related Personality Traits to Productivity in Labor Market :

In the last decade, researchers in labor economics and related areas have become more interested in personality traits as determinants of success in the labor market. Recently, psychologists and economists in the US and other Western countries have been carrying out several collaborative works focusing on this topic. This research may have a profound impact on labor economics, educational policies, and related areas. We conclude from this research that (i) evaluation of educational reforms based on changes in scores of cognitive skills might be insufficient, and (ii) educational policies should consider programs that improve noncognitive skills for children who live in an environment that is not conducive to skill development. The present article reviews recent research on the relationship between wage and “noncognitive skills,” a new concept put forward by a James J. Heckman a Nobel Prize laureate in Economics. This review focuses on personality traits as noncognitive skills. Although there are several indicators of success in the labor market, such as job satisfaction, in this article, we focus on wage as it is considered the most important indicator of worker productivity and an important outcome of education. I also show some results by using data from a relatively large sample survey conducted in Japan, and provide some discussions on the future direction of research on this topic.