RESEARCH

Working Papers

D. Montolio & P. Taberner (2018). Gender differences under test pressure and their impact on student performance: a quasi-experimental approach. IEB Working Paper 2018/21. [WORKING PAPER]

Dissemination: Info IEB

ABSTRACT: Student performance at university is a strong determinant of individual decisions and future outcomes, most notably labour opportunities. Although published studies have found gender differences in student performance in response to pressure, little is known about such differences when university students are exposed to test pressure. Based on field data, this study aims to examine gender differences in student academic performance in response to different levels of pressure when sitting multiple choice tests, a frequently employed exam format at university. To do so, the introduction of continuous assessment in the evaluation system of a university course allows us to exploit a unique quasi-experimental set up in which the same students take similar tests throughout the course but under different levels of pressure. Exploiting two data structures—namely, pooled cross-sections and panel data—we find that male students outperform their female counterparts when under high pressure. However, in low test pressure scenarios the gender gap is narrowed and even reversed in favour of female students. Finally, we analyse the mechanisms responsible for the gender gap by studying how each gender responds to test pressure, and by studying gender differences when omitting test items on multiple choice formats.

Conference Papers

J. Jofre, D. Montolio, P. Sorribas, P. Taberner & J. Vázquez-Grenno (2018). The unexpected results on student incentives of a change in the continuous assessment. ICERI2018 Proceedings, pp. 2949-2953. [LINK]

Work in Progress

The impact of teacher gender on student perfomance: evidence from higher education (with D. Montolio)

ABSTRACT: Despite the vast number of studies analysing the impact of teacher gender on student performance, there is no conclusion about the question, since results are mixed: there is no impact, girls obtain better grades with female instructors or there is gender alignment, i.e. boys obtain better grades with male teachers and girls with female teachers. Moreover, almost all this literature is focused on students at primary school, secondary school or high school level and, to the best of our knowledge, there is only one study which analyses this question with university students. In the present paper we seek to assess the impact of teacher gender on students’ grades when sitting a final exam at university level. More precisely, we analyse the impact of the interaction of teacher-student gender on student performance.

The impact of cultural activities on health and well-being among older people: evidence from a field experiment (with E. Costas-Pérez and P. Rey-Biel) [Working Paper Soon]

Dissemination: Blog AES (Spanish Health Economics Association)

ABSTRACT: This paper presents quantitative and qualitative results from a randomized control trial in which groups of the older population are assigned to cultural activities in order to measure their effects on their health and general well-being. We show that the cultural intervention has a positive impact on physical health and social relationships among the treatment participants compared to control. Through the focus group, we identified that interacting with people and being physically and mentally active are the two main mechanisms. Our results have important implications for the inclusion of cultural programs as a cost-effective measure to reduce the increasing health costs and the current loneliness’ issue presented by the current ageing of modern societies.

The impact of local crime on student perfomance and differences across gender: evidence from the metropolitan area of Barcelona (with D. Montolio)

Ocupación en la Industria local. Evaluación de la primera y segunda convocatorias (with M. Sánchez-Vidal and S. Maurer)

ABSTRACT: El objetivo de este trabajo es evaluar el impacto del programa “Ocupación en la Industria Local” llevado a cabo por la Diputación de Barcelona entre los años 2015 y 2017, y comprobar si eleva la probabilidad de estar ocupado en los beneficiarios del programa. Los resultados obtenidos a partir de la aplicación de técnicas de matching y diferencias en diferencias muestran que la probabilidad de encontrar trabajo para un individuo que participó en el programa se incrementa entre 7 y 12 puntos porcentuales al cabo de un año aproximadamente. El análisis se complementa con un análisis de heterogeneidad que permite identificar los efectos diferenciales en función de las características de los beneficiarios.

La incidencia del Programa Bilingüe en la segregación escolar por origen socioeconómico en la CAM: evidencia a partir de PISA (with L. Górtazar)

ABSTRACT: La segregación escolar por origen socioeconómico en secundaria de la Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid es la más alta de España y la segunda entre los países de la OCDE. El presente estudio tiene el doble objetivo de analizar la incidencia entre la implementación del Programa Bilingüe en Madrid a partir del curso 2004/05 en la segregación escolar por origen socioeconómico en la educación secundaria, así como su efecto en los resultados de aprendizaje de los alumnos. Los resultados indican que las familias en centros no bilingües tienen un nivel socioeconómico mucho más bajo que en centros bilingües. La segregación aumentó gradualmente entre 2009 y 2018, por dos motivos. Por un lado, la expansión de la red concertada durante la década anterior. Y por otro, la expansión del Programa Bilingüe: en 2015 se produce un fuerte aumento de la segregación dentro de la red pública coincidiendo con la llegada del programa bilingüe de los centros públicos al final de la ESO; en 2018 se produce un importante aumento de la segregación en los centros concertados-privados, consistente con la llegada del programa bilingüe en la red concertada al final de la ESO. Finalmente, controlando por varios factores, observamos que los estudiantes del sistema no bilingüe obtienen peores puntuaciones que los del sistema bilingüe en las pruebas PISA.

ABSTRACT: This paper aims at analysing the impact of local crime on student performance at university level and to analyse potential gender differences. We combine a georeferenced dataset of all the crimes comitted around the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona with academic and sociodemographic information of one cohort of students at the Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Barcelona. Following students over their bachelor's years, the identification strategy exploits the local crime variation when sitting final exams over time.