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Source: Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Segal, Carmit
Working When No One Is Watching: Motivation, Test Scores, and Economic Success
Working Paper, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, March 31, 2011.
Also: http://www.econ.upf.edu/~segal/SegalMotivationTestScoresMarch2011.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Earnings; Income; Motivation; Noncognitive Skills; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Previously published as: "Motivation, Test Scores, and Economic Success". http://www.econ.upf.edu/en/research/onepaper.php?id=1124

This paper suggests that scores of simple tests administered without performance-based incentives may depend on test-takers' personality traits associated with their level of intrinsic motivation. As an example of a simple test, I use the coding speed test that was administered without incentives to participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). I show that controlling for an extensive set of cognitive ability measures, the coding speed scores are correlated with the future earnings of male NLSY participants. The coding speed scores of the highly-motivated, though less-educated, group (potential recruits to the military), are higher than the NLSY participants' scores. I use controlled experiments to show directly that intrinsic motivation is an important component of the unincentivized coding speed scores. These results suggest that unincentivized test scores relate to economic success because they indicate favorable personality traits and not only cognitive skills.

Bibliography Citation
Segal, Carmit. "Working When No One Is Watching: Motivation, Test Scores, and Economic Success." Working Paper, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, March 31, 2011.