Measuring success in education: the role of effort on the test itself

Uri Gneezy, John List, Jeffrey Livingston, Xiangdong Qin, Sally Sadoff and Yang Xu

Framed Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website

Abstract: Tests measuring and comparing educational achievement are an important policy tool. We experimentally show that offering students extrinsic incentives to put forth effort on such achievement tests has differential effects across cultures. Offering incentives to U.S. students, who generally perform poorly on assessments, improved performance substantially. In contrast, Shanghai students, who are top performers on assessments, were not affected by incentives. Our findings suggest that in the absence of extrinsic incentives, ranking countries based on low-stakes assessments is problematic because test scores reflect differences in intrinsic motivation to perform well on the test itself, and not just differences in ability.

Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-ltv and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Measuring Success in Education: The Role of Effort on the Test Itself (2019)
Working Paper: Measuring Success in Education: The Role of Effort on the Test Itself (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:feb:framed:00614

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