From asking to observing. Behavioural measures of socio-emotional and motivational skills in large-scale assessments

Francesca Borgonovi, Alessandro Ferrara and Mario Piacentini
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Francesca Borgonovi: UCL Social Research Institute, United Kingdom
Alessandro Ferrara: Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Italy
Mario Piacentini: Directorate for Education and Skills, France

No 20-19, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: Socio-emotional and motivational skills are routinely measured using self-reports in large-scale educational assessments. Measures exploiting test-takers’ behaviour during the completion of questionnaires or cognitive tests are increasingly used as alternatives to self-reports in the economics of education literature. We use cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence to evaluate if behavioural measures can provide unbiased measures of socio-emotional and motivational skills to be used in empirical research using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We find that behavioural measures capture important aspects of students’ academic profiles: some are importantly associated with contemporaneous performance and educational attainment. However, these measures are only limitedly correlated among themselves and have low correlations with self-report measures of the same constructs. Moreover, behavioural measures have different levels of stability over time and sensitivity to design considerations. These results suggest that more research is needed before measures of students’ behaviour on a cognitive test can be used as valid indicators of socio-emotional and motivational skills.

Keywords: Socio-emotional and motivational skills; cross-country; PISA; large-scale assessments; behavioural measures; self-reports; education. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu and nep-neu
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