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Comparing the reliability and predictive power of child, teacher, and guardian reports of noncognitive skills.

ABSTRACT: Children's noncognitive or socioemotional skills (e.g., persistence and self-control) are typically measured using surveys in which either children rate their own skills or adults rate the skills of children. For many purposes-including program evaluation and monitoring school systems-ratings are often collected from multiple perspectives about a single child (e.g., from both the child and an adult). Collecting data from multiple perspectives is costly, and there is limited evidence on the benefits of this approach. Using a longitudinal survey, this study compares children's noncognitive skills as reported by themselves, their guardians, and their teachers. Although reports from all three types of respondents are correlated with each other, teacher reports have the highest internal consistency and are the most predictive of children's later cognitive outcomes and behavior in school. The teacher reports add predictive power beyond baseline measures of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) for most outcomes in schools. Measures collected from children and guardians add minimal predictive power beyond the teacher reports.

SUBMITTER: Feng S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8833216 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Comparing the reliability and predictive power of child, teacher, and guardian reports of noncognitive skills.

Feng Shuaizhang S Han Yujie Y Heckman James J JJ Kautz Tim T

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20220201 6

Children's noncognitive or socioemotional skills (e.g., persistence and self-control) are typically measured using surveys in which either children rate their own skills or adults rate the skills of children. For many purposes-including program evaluation and monitoring school systems-ratings are often collected from multiple perspectives about a single child (e.g., from both the child and an adult). Collecting data from multiple perspectives is costly, and there is limited evidence on the benef ...[more]

PMID: 35131849

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Project description:ImportanceNoncognitive life skills are patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings that complement cognitive ability in promoting positive economic and educational outcomes. These positive attributes have been associated with favorable social and health outcomes at older ages, but their combined association with survival is not known.ObjectivesTo evaluate the association of the combination of 5 noncognitive life skills with mortality, and to explore the role of sociodemographic, health, cognitive, and behavioral factors in explaining associations.Design, setting, and participantsThis cohort study used data from wave 5 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, conducted in 2010. Participants included adults 52 years and older. Associations of scores on 5 noncognitive life skills, including conscientiousness, perseverance, emotional stability, optimism, and control, with all-cause mortality were analyzed for a mean (SD) of 7.2 (1.3) years. Data analyses were completed in November 2019.ExposuresResponse to wave 5 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.Main outcomes and measuresNoncognitive life skills scores, including conscientiousness, perseverance, emotional stability, optimism, and control, were measured by questionnaire. The main outcome was all-cause mortality, and the associations with noncognitive life skills scores were analyzed using Cox proportional hazards regressions models to estimate hazard ratios per 1-SD increase in score.ResultsA total of 7850 participants (mean [SD] age, 66.5 [9.0] years; 4333 [55.2%] women) were included. Combined life skill score was positively associated with survival, with a hazard ratio of 0.81 (95% CI, 0.72-0.90) per 1-SD increase in positive attributes after adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, childhood socioeconomic status, educational attainment, baseline chronic disease, depressive symptoms, cognitive function, mobility impairment, social isolation, smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake, and fruit and vegetable consumption (P < .001). Excluding deaths during 24 months after baseline as a check for reverse causation showed the same pattern (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.70-0.89; P < .001). Associations were maintained after each life skill was omitted in turn from the aggregate score, indicating that no single positive attribute accounted for the protective association.Conclusions and relevanceThese findings suggest that noncognitive life skills are associated with survival at older ages. Whether training and education programs could enhance these attributes and influence mortality risk is not known, but fostering and maintaining life skills may be important in later life.

Dataset Information

Comparing the reliability and predictive power of child, teacher, and guardian reports of noncognitive skills.

Publications

Comparing the reliability and predictive power of child, teacher, and guardian reports of noncognitive skills.

Similar Datasets

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