Article Green Open Access 2018

The development of non-cognitive skills in adolescence

HP
Hoeschler, Peter
 BS
Balestra, Simone
 BU
Backes-Gellner, Uschi
Economics Letters
Journal · Vol. 163 · pp. 40-45
Abstract

We use a unique longitudinal data set to study the development of non-cognitive skills in adolescence. We measure – for the first time – the development over six years of the recently introduced non-cognitive skill “Grit.” We also measure the traditional Big Five personality traits. For Grit, we find significant within-person mean-level increases of about.5 standard deviation units for our sample of adolescent students. These increases are comparable with increases in the Big Five, where conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability also increase with similar magnitude. We show that these changes are heterogeneous and robust to reasonable measurement error. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

Author Keywords

vocational education and training non-cognitive skills grit big five personality traits

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Author Affiliations
Universität Zürich, Zurich, ZH, Switzerland
University of St. Gallen, St Gallen, SG, Switzerland
Funding & Acknowledgements
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, SNF
Grant: P1ZHP1-161627
We would like to thank Eric Bettinger, Thomas Dohmen, Edward Lazear, Ofer Malamud, Simon Janssen, Carmit Segal, seminar participants at the University of Zurich, participants of the Meeting of the Economics of Education Association, and of the Fall Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management for helpful comments. This study is partly funded by the Swiss Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology through its Leading House on the Economics of Education, Firm Behavior and Training Policies. Peter Hoeschler benefited from a grant provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation for a research stay at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy (project P1ZHP1-161627), and is grateful to his colleagues at Harris for their great inspiration and support.
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