Does Relative Grading help Male Students? Evidence from a Field Experiment in the Classroom

Eszter Czibor, Sander Onderstal, Randolph Sloof and Mirjam Praag
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Eszter Czibor: University of Chicago, United States

No 14-116/V, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

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The provision of non-pecuniary incentives in education is a topic that has received much scholarly attention lately. Our paper contributes to this discussion by investigating the effectiveness of grade incentives in increasing student performance. We perform a direct comparison of the two most commonly used grading practices: the absolute (i.e., criterion-referenced) and the relative (i.e., norm-referenced) grading schemes in a large-scale field experiment at a university. We hypothesize that relative grading, by creating a rank-order tournament in the classroom, provides stronger incentives for male students than absolute grading. In the full sample, we find weak support for our hypothesis. Among the more motivated students we find evidence that men indeed score significantly higher on the test when graded on a curve. Female students, irrespective of their motivation, do not increase their scores under relative grading. Since women slightly outperform men under absolute grading, grading on a curve actually narrows the gender gap in performance.

Keywords: Education; Test performance; Grade incentives; Competition; Gender; Field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A22 C93 D03 I21 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Does relative grading help male students? Evidence from a field experiment in the classroom (2020)
Working Paper: Does Relative Grading Help Male Students? Evidence from a Field Experiment in the Classroom (2016)
Working Paper: Does Relative Grading Help Male Students? Evidence from a Field Experiment in the Classroom (2014)
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