Measuring Skills in Developing Countries
Measures of cognitive, noncognitive, and technical skills are increasingly used in development economics to analyze the determinants of skill formation, the role of skills in economic decisions, or simply because they are potential confounders. Yet...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/775311488980295780/Measuring-skills-in-developing-countries http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26250 |
| Summary: | Measures of cognitive, noncognitive, and
technical skills are increasingly used in development
economics to analyze the determinants of skill formation,
the role of skills in economic decisions, or simply because
they are potential confounders. Yet in most cases, these
measures have only been validated in high-income countries.
This paper tests the reliability and validity of some of the
most commonly used skills measures in a rural developing
context. A survey with a series of skills measurements was
administered to more than 900 farmers in western Kenya, and
the same questions were asked again after three weeks to
test the reliability of the measures. To test predictive
power, the study also collected information on agricultural
practices and production during the four following seasons.
The results show the cognitive skills measures are reliable
and internally consistent, while technical skills are
difficult to capture and very noisy. The evidence further
suggests that measurement error in noncognitive skills is
non-classical, as correlations between questions are driven
in part by the answering patterns of the respondents and the
phrasing of the questions. Addressing both random and
systematic measurement error using common psychometric
practices and repeated measures leads to improvements and
clearer predictions, but does not address all concerns. The
paper provides a cautionary tale for naïve interpretations
of skill measures. It also points to the importance of
addressing measurement challenges to establish the
relationship of different skills with economic outcomes.
Based on these findings, the paper derives guidelines for
skill measurement and interpretation in similar contexts. |
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