Measuring skills in developing countries

Measures of cognitive, noncognitive and technical skills are increasingly used in development economics to analyze determinants of skills 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 developed countries. This paper tests the reliability and validity of some of the most commonly used skills measures in a rural developing context. [The authors] administrated a survey with a series of skills measurement to more than 900 farmers in western Kenya, and asked the same questions...  [+] Show more

Measures of cognitive, noncognitive and technical skills are increasingly used in development economics to analyze determinants of skills 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 developed countries. This paper tests the reliability and validity of some of the most commonly used skills measures in a rural developing context. [The authors] administrated a survey with a series of skills measurement to more than 900 farmers in western Kenya, and asked the same questions again after three weeks to test the reliability of the measures. To test predictive power, [the authors] also collected information on agricultural practices and production during 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 correlation between questions are driven in part by answering patterns of 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 naive 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 authors] derive guidelines for skill measurement and interpretation in similar contexts.

Published abstract.